Distorted
by Lynse
Summary: The Doctor is pleasantly surprised when he finds himself on seaQuest during her first tour, but it isn't long before he realizes that something's wrong. He can feel something, something that's not quite right, but he can't put his finger on what that is.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: For the Doctor, this is set after _The Waters of Mars_. For the _seaQuest_ and her crew, it's between _Such Great Patience_ and _The Good Death_. I have never actually seen any of the _seaQuest_ episodes after the first season, and therefore I would like to gratefully acknowledge and thank Questfan for helping me out, answering my questions and giving me ideas, although anything contradictory to canon is of course a result of my ignorance or oversight and I apologize for it in advance. Nevertheless, I do hope that you'll forgive me and enjoy the story.

_Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, and I make no money from this work of fiction!_

* * *

Nathan Bridger, captain of the world renowned deep submergence vehicle, _seaQuest_, looked at the printouts in front of him and then at the chief scientist on his vessel, Dr. Kristin Westphalen. He shook his head and handed the clipboard back to her. "I don't know what I'm looking at," he admitted.

"It's the chemical analysis of the stone fragment I brought back from the site," Dr. Westphalen answered, hugging the clipboard to her chest. "It appears to contain traces of material that don't match anything we've yet discovered on Earth. The fossil record indicates that it's been embedded in the rock face for roughly 250 million years. It _looks_ like we've found a piece of a meteorite that fell to Earth at that time, but its chemical makeup isn't like anything we've seen before. It's new. It's _different._"

"It's out of our jurisdiction," Bridger reminded her.

He was right, and she knew it. _SeaQuest_ was primarily a scientific research vessel, but her realm was the water and the mysteries it held within its depths. What had caught Dr. Westphalen's interest was a discovery made by archaeologists situated in Greenland, seeking the remains of a Viking settlement. Their discovery of a veritable fossil treasure trove had led to an influx of palaeontologists and geologists and the like. Within the week, the meteorite had been discovered. The news that it contained elements unlike even those found in other meteorites had spread, and it was shortly thereafter that Bridger had learned that Dr. Westphalen hadn't always wanted to pursue a career in biochemistry and did, in fact, nurse a childhood interest in astronomy, albeit not very actively.

Despite that, she'd managed to coerce him into letting her go there and look for herself. That she'd managed to find a fragment to study didn't really surprise him. That she was trying to find a reason to return did. She wasn't one to blatantly disobey orders, even if she wasn't part of the military as he was. She had a strict sense of order and regulation, and she had enough sense to know when to ignore orders that went against what was, at least to her, completely and utterly _right_.

But this wasn't a case of right or wrong, of life or death. It was just a case of interest. There was nothing he knew of that was stopping her from taking a shore leave and pursuing this on her own time. It wasn't just that she was saving that time to spend with her family; it was something else, and Bridger, for one, had no idea what that was. He doubted that he was imagining it, but he couldn't rule out the possibility that she herself was imagining some unknown reason, or a strange sense of duty to _seaQuest_ herself, that was keeping her from going.

Whatever it was, it kept Dr. Westphalen fighting. "The things we could learn—"

"Can be learned by others," Bridger interrupted gently. He caught her expression and added, "Why is this so important to you, Kristin?"

She sighed and looked away for a moment. When she faced him again, she admitted, "Since we uncovered that alien ship, I had proof that there were others out there. I just couldn't share it, with any except those who shared my experience, and then it all dissipated in front of my eyes. And that's hard. I want to learn and discover and _share_ what I find out so that we can keep searching for more answers, but even if it wasn't all top secret and classified and all that, I wouldn't have anything to offer the naysayers and the doubters. This meteorite won't give me that, but it is tangible. If we can figure out the structure of some of the compounds it contains, and replicate them, we'll be continuing our search. It's…." She trailed off and didn't continue until he prompted her. "I've encountered more things than I can explain since I've been on board this ship. I just…I just want to try to explain them."

She knew her options, but Bridger reminded her of them anyway. "It's your choice," he finished, "but that's not UEO territory, and I can't help you."

"I know," she said, sounding resigned, "but sometimes, I just wish…." She shook her head. "No matter. There are plenty of other things to study and, as you said, there are others to learn about this particular matter. I'll find out in time."

"You don't have any studies that you need to conduct that would be relevant?"

Dr. Westphalen laughed. "At the moment, no. It is more scientifically pressing for me to re-enact that experiment I was conducting a few months ago, prior to Krieg eating my lobsters after I put them in the refrigerator to slow their metabolism."

"A few months?" Bridger repeated. "You've left it that long?"

"Longer, I daresay," Dr. Westphalen allowed, "but I haven't managed to procure any more lobsters for the purpose."

"Haven't you—?"

Dr. Westphalen gave a small shake of her head. "No. After hearing how delicious they tasted, I haven't been able to trust myself not to cook one myself."

Bridger smiled. "If you ever give in to temptation, be sure to invite me down. But in the meantime, I think I heard Dr. Levin mention something about bacteria that live around black smokers?"

"Thermophilic archaea around hydrothermal vents," Dr. Westphalen corrected, though she could have been much more precise and more correct than that herself.

Bridger's smile became a wry grin. "We'll plot a course for Loki's Castle," he told her, citing the nearest location of a vent field that he could recall.

Dr. Westphalen returned his smile. "Thank you," she said.

He went to give the command to head for seventy-three degrees north along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and Dr. Westphalen returned to her science lab, and in the weeks that followed, neither mentioned the stone fragment that was secreted away in a corner cabinet in Dr. Westphalen's quarters.

* * *

After everything that had happened, the Doctor had decided that he needed to be reminded of something that he should never have forgotten. Humility was among those old lessons, of course—that was one he had never quite learned, if he was honest. But he'd thought that if he, perhaps, dropped in on the celebrations at the end of Earth's First World War, he would be reminded of what relief and joy and everything else felt like as it rose out of the wake of destruction and despair.

He miscalculated.

Just slightly.

Which was how he ended up just over a century off the mark, sometime in the spring of 2019.

But all thoughts of post-wartime celebrations went out of his head when the TARDIS caught the tail end of a curious transmission. It was a microwave signal, but that wasn't unusual. It was also pinpointed, specifically, towards what the humans had named the M-100 galaxy, a messier object in the constellation they'd named Coma Berenices. But that wasn't terribly unusual, either, even if it wasn't particularly expected. What was strange was that, judging from what he understood in the feed, the entire message was translated into relay frequencies which, the TARDIS confirmed, were suspiciously similar to the frequencies dolphins used for communication.

As the signal died away, scattering, he tried to pinpoint the source. "C'mon, c'mon," he muttered, dancing around the console, flicking switches and twisting dials and hitting buttons and fiddling with different knobs. But however quick he was, he wasn't quick enough, and he lost the trace as he tried to triangulate the position.

Frowning, he did the best he could—he replayed, on a loop, the few seconds of the microwave transmission he'd heard, analyzing it, decoding it, translating it, trying to figure out who was sending it or who it was intended for.

It wasn't enough.

Stopping his furious calculating, the Doctor rocked back on his heels. "How good," he asked his ship, "are you at guessing? At the moment, I mean. How close can you get me to that signal you picked up?" He listened for a moment to his ship's answer, noting her indignation, and added, offended himself, "What do you mean, a lot better than me? I'll have you know I'm a brilliant guesser!"

The reply, gently but sternly delivered, stole the wind from his sails. "No," the Doctor agreed softly. "Not always. And I'll remember that. I won't judge so quickly, and I won't act against my own principles again, trying to do something I know I shouldn't, no matter how much it hurts to let it happen. But that's different than guessing, and you know it." He made a face at the TARDIS's reply. "Of course this is still guessing for you," he retorted. "_You_ don't know where you're going any more than I do!"

The change in the ship's hum had reached a point that meant it would have been noticeable to his companions, if he'd had any with him. "Fine," the Doctor muttered. "I know there are things you keep from me, and I know that some of that is because you think you can't explain it to me, and I'll trust that this is one of the times you just can't relay the information easily and have to act on your own. But I _do_ appreciate it when you tell me things."

The Doctor listened to the TARDIS's knowing response, and then he released her into the Vortex once again, clinging to the sides of the console as she tumbled along, stabilizing here or adjusting for a current there, but trusting her with all his hearts. He didn't know where or even when he'd come out, but wherever it was, he believed it would help him figure out what, exactly, he'd heard. And he hoped that that would tell him why he felt, instinctively, that it was so very important that he sort it out, whatever it was.

* * *

The Doctor poked his head cautiously out of the TARDIS and looked around. Wherever he was, it was in cramped quarters. Or perhaps _crammed_ would be the more appropriate word, since the only reason the room looked cramped, from this perspective, was because it was crammed full of storage boxes.

For a moment, the Doctor considered moving the TARDIS, but decided she'd be safer here anyhow. She hadn't been able to follow the signal back, exactly. The transmission point was from somewhere in the open ocean. Landing him there wouldn't have done any good. Where she'd taken him was, apparently, her best guess as to where he could find answers.

Unfortunately for him, she seemed to think he deserved to figure out where that was on his own.

No matter; it never did take him very long to figure that out. Figuring out what was wrong and fixing it—_that _was what took time.

By the time he'd found his way through the maze to the door, he'd realized that he was on a ship—a very large one—and that he was underwater, making the ship a submarine. He could tell from the sounds it made. Ships and submarines didn't make the same sounds, not if you knew how to listen, and he knew how to listen.

Nothing seemed wrong, though. Everything appeared to be in order. Shipshape, actually. But he wasn't in the best position to judge, having only seen a dimly lit storage room—part of the hold, perhaps—and listened to the ship. She ran quite smoothly, this ship. He was impressed, and he wondered where he was. He knew he was still in 2019, so there were plenty of underwater vessels into which he could have stumbled. Humans had started exploring the oceans by then; they'd created the United Earth Oceans—the UEO—organization to boot. That didn't mean that they had things under control, of course. Just that they were trying.

The Doctor grinned. For all their faults, he loved humans. They always tried, for better or for worse. Very few of them gave up. Their efforts showed, and in time, they usually paid off. Humans may not be the most advanced species out there, not by a long shot, even if he only thought about their little spot in the universe, but he liked them. He'd met more than a handful of brilliant humans—quick ones, who caught on, who followed their instincts instead of ignoring them, who—

The Doctor swallowed, the grin wiped clean off his face.

He'd met humans who had shown far better judgement than he in a situation he knew more about.

Recently, one stood out in particular.

He'd meant to help. He really had. He just…. He shouldn't have tried, not when he knew he shouldn't—_couldn't—_and certainly not when he knew what was at stake if he did. But he had gone ahead and done it anyway, and he'd made it even harder for Captain Adelaide Brooke to do what she had to in order to preserve what needed to become the histories he'd studied so earnestly, if rather reluctantly, all those years ago and had explored in the time since.

Thinking about what he'd tried to do—what he'd nearly done—left a sour taste in his mouth.

The door was locked, but he made short work of it with his sonic screwdriver. In a moment, he was out in the corridor, looking around for direction but promptly ignoring the signs and following, instead, his gut instinct—the same one he'd deliberately ignored all too recently, with unpleasant consequences. He had a better idea of the size of the vessel he was on out here. He coupled that observation with the sounds of her engines and—

The Doctor grinned. Oh, he had to be right this time. And this would be great—positively brilliant. He'd heard about it, but never actually dropped in to see it. The greatest vessel on Earth at this time, and here he was, exploring it at last. _SeaQuest_. No doubt about it. And since this was the original ship, she was captained by the wise yet formidable Nathan Bridger. Judging by his reputation, the Doctor would like him, quite well. He may have advanced through the ranks of the UEO navy relatively quickly and been known and respected well enough to be tricked back into service, but the Doctor knew the line between being a soldier and being a leader—it was a line he'd tread many a time, whether he liked it or not. Sometimes there wasn't a difference. Sometimes they seemed to fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. It all depended on the type of leader, or soldier, someone was and, more often than not, circumstances factored into the equation.

But, providing his sources were right, the Doctor wouldn't be taking an instant dislike to Captain Bridger by any stretch of the imagination. He didn't seem to be the sort of person who would act without thinking, shooting first and asking questions later. In combat, he'd likely bluff when he could and make good on his word—or threat, rather, as the case all too often was—when he couldn't, doing everything he could to do what was right, even if that wasn't what his superiors particularly approved of. Though, that might be because they didn't always know until later.

His recollections of the history of _seaQuest_ were, he had to admit, vague at best. But most of that was because he didn't know as much as he'd like. He hadn't taken any of his companions here in the past. He'd say that that was because the vessel was partially military, and he liked avoiding those types, particularly as there wasn't a quick place to run to if things got ugly and they were cut off from the TARDIS for whatever reason, but if he could end up in one of Earth's underwater sea bases in the relative future with a couple companions in tow, that wasn't the best excuse. But…it wasn't really an excuse he was looking for, was it? He didn't need _excusing_ from anything; he hadn't done anything wrong.

Well, not here, anyway.

The Doctor shook his head, but couldn't quite clear it. Something was…strange, here. It was…. Well, he wasn't exactly sure _what_ it was, or he wouldn't be spending so much time trying to figure that out. No, wait, hold on, that wasn't right; he hadn't spent much time here at all, had he? That was the point. He hadn't come here before. He found it interesting—intriguing, even. They housed some cutting edge technology for the time, and he was always interested in the processes that brought that technology out.

He felt edgy. Like he knew he'd forgotten something but couldn't remember what. That was the best way to describe it, even though it wasn't what it was. He'd been through that enough times to recognize that when it happened. And this, well—it wasn't like having an itch he couldn't scratch—quite different than simply having an itch that shouldn't be scratched—or like trying to will away a forbidden sneeze in a dusty room. The agitation was more emotional than physical, but even that didn't seem quite right.

The Doctor frowned. He hated not being able to put his finger on things. It was such a bother. Things always went much more smoothly when he could figure it all out from the start and just needed to work on a way to sort everything out once he knew what the trouble was.

And not finding the proper words—that was far less common in this regeneration than it had been in others. Well, in others, perhaps, he had taken a bit more care in choosing his words. But not much, really, when it came down to it. He had more experience now, and he was still a quick thinker, perhaps quicker than ever—excepting those times when he was trying to process everything from his years upon years of experience, trying to pinpoint one detail that would focus the picture so that everything became clear and made sense. Sometimes he wasted words, but usually that was on purpose. Sometimes it wasn't.

It felt like the proper analogy was on the tip of his tongue, but the moment he came close to it, it danced away, and he was left wondering if he had even _had_ a proper analogy at all. He _was_ reminded, just slightly, of the slippery feeling of trying to force the like poles of two magnets together. That resistance that was often tested yet never seemed to be broken—at least if the magnets were strong enough—was something he could feel here. Sort of.

Like someone was trying to keep him away from here.

The Doctor snorted. That entire notion was absolutely ridiculous. Well, maybe not the _entire_ notion; he had no doubt some being or another out there would want to keep him away from something. But not this; there was no reason for it. Besides, it wasn't very easy to keep him away from anything. He tended to go precisely where he wasn't wanted.

The strange feeling receded slightly. Or perhaps he was just getting used to it. Either way, the Doctor pushed forward, not knowing what he was getting into and grinning for that very reason.

* * *

A/N: I'm aware that Dr. Westphalen is a bit out of character, given her invented interest (along with, undoubtedly, my own unintentional mistakes), but I'll just ask that you bear with me until that's sorted, all right?


	2. Chapter 2

Lieutenant Ben Krieg was the ship's supply and morale officer.

He was also the first one to see the stranger wandering around C deck without a visitor's badge.

"Aw, nuts," he muttered, quickly shoving his winnings from an illicit poker game deeper into his pockets. He hadn't realized that anyone else had come aboard. If they hadn't been alerted, this had to be some plan of the UEO's that only the people on the bridge knew about. Probably another one of their tests, trying to find out what the crew would do in a situation like this. He wondered what the stranger's role was—certainly not to take over the ship, or he'd have a gun and backup.

Krieg watched as the man stopped suddenly and peered at a seemingly inconsequential spot along the corridor. Very slowly, he withdrew his hands from his pockets and ran his fingers along the edge, just under the window that showed one of the passages the ship's resident dolphin, Darwin, could take through the ship. Krieg watched as the man stared at his fingertips, licked them, and repeated the sweeping gesture before dropping down to look at something on the side of the corridor, closer to the deck.

Krieg groaned. The man was an inspector. And he was, clearly, looking for every single thing that was remotely out of place—including specks of dust. That was the curious thing about dust—even when you expected not to have it, it was there to find. Judging by the inspector's expression, he had managed to find some. But as he licked his fingers _again_—Krieg wasn't about to question the man's methods; all the inspectors seemed absolutely crazy anyway, especially the last one, although he had been sent to check on their progress as a military vessel rather than general maintenance, as seemed to be this one's job—his expression turned to one of puzzlement.

Krieg knew he wouldn't be able to get past him without being noticed, and he needed to squirrel away his winnings before he ran into someone else, so he decided it would be less suspicious and likely more proper to greet _seaQuest_'s latest inspector. He strode over to the man, making sure his posture was impeccable, and asked, "Sir, may I please see your visitor's badge?"

The man looked up, nodded, and rose to his feet, one hand digging into the breast pocket of his suit. He pulled out a slim black wallet and flipped it open.

It didn't, predictably, contain his visitor's badge. It contained his identification—one that made Krieg snap to attention. "Sir, sorry, sir. I was not informed, sir."

A trace of surprise crossed the man's features and he glanced at his identification himself. Shrugging, he pocketed it again and said, in a distinctly British voice, "As you were, Lieutenant. This is an informal visit. I'm off duty."

Krieg didn't question the obvious lie. It was never good to contradict the higher-ups. If that was his story, Krieg would go along with it. One would think they'd pick a better one, though—or at least give him a visitor's pass to display.

"Well," the UEO official continued, "not _off duty_, exactly. But I won't have any more of that standing at attention nonsense. I'm here for a very specific reason, and it would suit my purposes if you instead called me Dr. John Smith or, better yet, just the Doctor. It won't do to let others know of my…_position_ in the UEO."

"Forgive me, sir," Krieg started, "but unless you want to be challenged by everyone you meet, you'll have to display a visitor's pass."

The Doctor, if that's what he wanted to be called, frowned. "Yes. Right. Suppose I should. Any idea where I can get one?"

"They didn't give you—?"

"My reasons for being here," the Doctor interrupted hastily, "are too important to entrust to every single person who would have to know about them for the necessary paperwork to go through." He looked at Krieg thoughtfully for a moment. "Lieutenant Benjamin Krieg," he began slowly, "I've heard a lot about you."

Krieg pasted a nervous smile on his face. "All good things, I hope."

"Well," the Doctor said instead, "I'm not exactly interested in the _good_ things at the moment." Krieg gave a start of realization of the unspoken request, and the Doctor nodded. "Would it be too much trouble, do you think?"

"Sir, I can't compromise—"

"I'll put in a good word for you," the Doctor added.

Krieg's smile was genuine this time. "Well, in that case, come right along…."

* * *

"Quick work," the Doctor praised, looking at his visitor's pass.

"I aim to please, sir," Krieg answered.

The Doctor clipped the pass to his suit and glanced around the supply officer's quarters for a moment. Deciding to test the waters, he asked, "What sort of things has _seaQuest_ run into lately?"

The question seemed to make Krieg nervous. The man's response—"Oh, I'm sure you've read all the reports, sir."—seemed to confirm that.

"I'm asking after the things that haven't made it into the reports," the Doctor answered, rubbing his fingertips together, feeling between them the last traces of the silicon crystals he'd picked up from the corridor. He was fairly certain that he knew what they were, and that would explain the destination of the transmission he'd caught and confirm its source. But it didn't tell him what that message contained or why it had been sent, and he wanted to know that, though he was beginning to have a good idea anyhow, at least in terms of what the message would have said.

He _could_ hack into the ship's systems and trace the transmission to its point of origin and decode it from there, but it would be simpler if he knew where to look for it. The crystals weren't fresh, newly formed, but they weren't ages old, either. They wouldn't still be around if they were; they weren't the sort of thing that lasted too long, providing that they were what he was thinking. Whatever had happened had happened recently enough.

"We are sure to properly document everything, sir," Krieg continued. "If any little detail hasn't made it into the reports, it would simply be because it is inconsequential."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "There are those here who would deem some details inconsequential in the interest of keeping them from UEO command?"

The lieutenant realized his mistake and instantly backtracked. "Oh, no, sir. You misunderstand me. I just mean to say that we no longer find it necessary to bother you with unnecessary details."

"Really?"

Krieg swallowed. "Yes, sir. Of course, sir."

The Doctor closed his eyes. He'd had enough of that. Well, he'd had enough of it right off the start, actually. "Lieutenant," he said, "in the interest of discretion, I would ask that you refrain from addressing me as 'sir'. Doctor will do just fine, thank you." He opened his eyes. "Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal, si—Doctor."

"Thank you." The Doctor was silent for a moment. Then he added, "My reasons for being here, Lieutenant Krieg, are not entirely clear, even to me. I can, however, assure you that I do not intend for any harm to come upon you or anyone else on board this ship. The best way to ensure that, however, comes by leaving me to my own devices. I would ask that you keep your silence, Lieutenant, about who I am. As far as you are concerned, I am merely a visiting doctor, intent on learning what I can of the science conducted on this great vessel."

"Of course, Doctor," Krieg said immediately. The Doctor breathed an inward sigh of relief; he'd thought, for a moment, that he'd been laying it on a bit too thick. "But I trust that you informed the captain of your purpose when you boarded?"

Oh. Right. "Captain Bridger," the Doctor replied carefully, "does not, unfortunately, have prior knowledge of my purposes here. I intend to inform him at the earliest possible moment."

Krieg looked surprised, quickly putting two and two together and realizing that the captain must not even know of the Doctor's visit. "But then how did you get on board?" Realizing the frankness of his outburst, he tried to temper it with, "If you don't mind my asking, Doctor."

A smile tugged at the Doctor's lips. "Oh, I just had to pull a favour or two. You'd be surprised by what I can accomplish. Now, if you don't mind, Lieutenant, I'd better get to it." And before the stunned supply officer could say anything else, the Doctor ducked out of the man's quarters and headed down the corridor.

He was trying to find the science lab. If nothing else, he could get his hands on some equipment and analyze the silicon crystals, just to be sure. There was nothing stopping him from just going back to the TARDIS, of course, but he was noticeable here, and if he had to sneak his way back there repeatedly, someone would suspect something and investigate. And he really didn't want that.

Besides, he wasn't entirely sure who Lieutenant Krieg had thought he was. Before he'd gotten the psychic paper out, that is. He _could_ have triggered the alarm, setting the entire ship on alert, but he hadn't. Whatever incorrect assumption he'd been acting on, it had bought the Doctor some time. And since the supply officer had been good enough to dig him up a plausible visitor's pass, he ought to, theoretically, have fewer questions to answer.

He was just about to take the turn to what he thought was the main science lab when he caught sight of the dolphin watching him. Wanting to get a better look, the Doctor walked over to him, and the dolphin moved on, swimming a few feet ahead. The Doctor followed him, realizing as the dolphin moved forward again as he approached that he was being led somewhere. "I hope you know what you're doing," the Doctor muttered, plodding along obediently.

He lost track of the dolphin shortly thereafter, but managed to successfully follow the signs to the moon pool and was rewarded for his efforts when he spotted the dolphin waiting there for him. The room was empty, so the Doctor strode over to the end of the pool and reached out to stroke the dolphin.

"What's your name, eh?" the Doctor asked. He listened to the response, not caring that he was getting a bit wet, and answered, "I'm the Doctor." He paused, then asked, "Do you know why I'm here? Did you call me? Or, no, wait, better yet—the people aboard this ship encountered aliens, correct? And they sent them a message in response, one that you translated? When was that? And what did the aliens look like? Could you tell me? I think if I can figure that out, I might have a better idea of why I'm here." Another pause. "Could be wrong, of course. Have been before. But it'll still be a start even if I am."

The clicks and calls the Doctor received in response were disappointing. "No, I suppose not," he agreed. "Your species never did take to measuring time like humans." He fell silent for a while again, thinking as he stroked the dolphin. "Can you feel it?" he asked finally. "There's a sort of pressure, a tension, something. I can't pinpoint what it is, let alone where it's coming from."

The dolphin dove away from him, showering him with water. "Oi!" the Doctor protested. "That was uncalled for!" He shook his head, sending water droplets flying himself. "A simple 'mind your own business' would have sufficed, you know," he groused. But he wasn't really angry, and the dolphin knew it. Besides, he'd gotten what he deserved: a dousing for his lie—even if the dousing had come first. Being told to stay out of something _wouldn't_ have sufficed—if anything, it would have made him more curious, and he'd've tried harder to figure it all out.

The dolphin swam back to him again, and the Doctor realized he'd misinterpreted the meaning. "Oh," he said, apologetic now. "Sorry. I should have realized. You would feel a lot of different pressures, wouldn't you? But I _can't_ describe it any better. It…. It seems to surround me from all sides. Not bearing down, just…being there. Reminding me. I can push through it, but I can't break it, and I can't seem to find the centre of the source. It ought to get stronger at its origin and weaker at the edges, but this isn't like that. It's been steady wherever I've gone. Constant, but…slippery."

Another series of clicks and squeals, and the Doctor relented, stroking the dolphin again. "I imagine you'd see quite a lot of what's happening on this ship," the Doctor said quietly. "You'd spend most of your time observing, wouldn't you? And they wouldn't be inclined to notice you, not always. You've the gift of unobtrusiveness. People must underestimate you all the time."

"Not all the time," a voice countered.

The Doctor gave a squawk of surprise and twisted around. He hated it when people managed to sneak up on him. He never knew what they were up to. This latest intruder on his private conversation, though, didn't appear to be much of a threat on the surface. It was just a boy, probably sixteen, seventeen—no more than eighteen. But he looked quick and clever and stood with the arrogance of someone who knew that, and the Doctor knew enough not to underestimate him.

"Who are you?" the boy challenged.

The Doctor stood up. "I'm the Doctor," he replied simply, getting to his feet. "And you?"

The boy ignored him. "What are you doing here?"

The Doctor's mouth quirked into a smile as he gestured at his dampened suit. "I was just having a conversation with your dolphin," he replied. "He didn't take as kindly to some of the things I was saying as I might have hoped."

"How did you get here?" the boy continued.

The Doctor looked affronted. "You're asking _me_ that?" he asked. "I could very well ask the same thing of you. You don't look old enough to qualify to be on this ship as either a military officer or a scientist, and if you are, you certainly aren't dressed for the part."

"I have more right to be here than you," the boy shot back angrily.

The Doctor opened his mouth to retaliate, to come back with a counter argument, when he suddenly remembered who the boy had to be. "Oh," he said, in a different voice than before. "You're Lucas, aren't you? Lucas Wolenczak."

The boy—Lucas—started. But he nodded and dropped his challenging demeanour, pointing to the Doctor's chest, where the visitor's badge was pinned. "Sorry," he said, though he didn't entirely sound it. "I didn't know." He didn't add what the Doctor knew he was thinking—that no one told him anything. "But you shouldn't be here anyway," Lucas continued. "This is a top secret project."

"I've a very high clearance," the Doctor answered. "Would you mind showing me?"

"I shouldn't, not without the captain's permission."

The Doctor nodded his agreement. "But there's no harm in my guessing, is there?" he asked. Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heels, examining the room around him more closely for the first time. When he'd finished one circuit, he stopped and looked at Lucas. "Interspecies communication," he declared. Grinning, he asked, "Am I right?"

Lucas was startled. "Uh, yes," he confirmed—but he sounded wary.

"Brilliant," the Doctor said. "Mind if we give it a try? Dolphin's not exactly my best language." He walked over to pluck the appropriate bit of equipment from its base.

To his credit, Lucas reacted more quickly than the Doctor had expected. He eased the communicator out of the Doctor's hands. "I'd better handle it," he said, by way of explanation. "I know what I'm doing."

The Doctor watched, interested, as the boy activated the technology he had, judging by the way he treated it, designed. "Darwin?" Lucas asked, testing the communicator.

A few clicks and squeals from the dolphin, which were translated into, "Lucas play?" and relayed over the speakers.

The Doctor was impressed, but before he could announce this, Lucas continued, "No, Darwin. Not right now. I'm just…. I'm, ah, wondering if you want to meet this man, Dr.—?" He glanced at the Doctor for the answer.

"Just the Doctor will do," the Doctor replied. He walked over to the edge of the moon pool and grinned at the dolphin. "Hello, Darwin."

Lucas looked at him for a moment. "Did you want to ask Darwin something?"

"Oh, I've asked him plenty of things already," the Doctor answered. "He just didn't see fit to answer most of my questions. Pity, that. I expect some of the answers he's just keeping to himself." He paused. "But, everyone's entitled to secrets, I suppose. Beggars can't be choosers." He thought for a moment, then reached for the communicator after all, saying, "On second thought, perhaps I ought to ask him something." Lucas relinquished the instrument, and the Doctor spoke into it, asking, "Darwin, have you felt anything change recently, like something's building up, like the calm before the storm?"

"Storm came," Darwin replied.

The Doctor frowned, not entirely happy with how much Darwin apparently knew about him. "That's not what I asked," he complained. "That pressure, that sense of foreboding, that feeling that something's wrong—have you felt that?"

Lucas tugged the communicator out of his hands again. "We're still developing the program," he explained. "It's self-educational, but it's not sophisticated enough to give you the answer you want. We haven't progressed that far."

The Doctor sighed. "You just don't know what I'm asking, or why I'm asking it," he muttered.

"No," Lucas agreed, "I don't. But I can tell you that you're not going to get an answer."

The Doctor pursed his lips. "Not directly, at any rate," he conceded. He looked back at Lucas. "Could you ask if Darwin knows where I should look first?"

"I'd suggest," Lucas said, turning the communicator off, "starting with the bridge. I don't know who you wandered away from, but the captain's not going to like having a civilian loose on his ship without supervision."

The Doctor frowned. "I didn't wander away from anyone," he protested, though he muttered most of that protest under his breath. Louder, he said, "I wasn't doing any harm."

"Not here, maybe," Lucas agreed, "but you might have elsewhere."

"But I didn't," the Doctor pointed out. He pulled at his visitor's pass. "Would I have gotten this if I intended trouble?"

Lucas frowned and looked at it more closely. "Wait a minute," he said slowly, in a tone that told the Doctor he'd been thick to draw attention to the pass in the first place. "That looks like something Ben forged! He's got the seal wrong. I told him before that he's got the wrong angle for the tines on the trident."

Not willing to let his feelings show on his face, the Doctor plucked the badge off and took a closer look at it himself. "Really?" he asked, sounding as surprised as he could. "You lot gave me a—" But he stopped suddenly, taking in the look on Lucas's face and realizing that the teenager would probably know the minute he started lying—or at least that he knew someone who would. And since lying wasn't his forte, he'd be better off not bothering trying, not over something so small. He could talk his way out of it, and they'd be more inclined to believe him later if he started by admitting that he wasn't, really, a legitimate visitor.

Well, he hoped so, at any rate.

* * *

Lucas didn't, as the Doctor had expected, drag him straight to the bridge. Perhaps the boy figured that, if he was a spy, taking him to the bridge would be showing him too many things he shouldn't be seeing. At any rate, they worked their way over to the port side of the C deck to a room labelled 'mammal engineering'—a room that, the Doctor quickly discovered, was Lucas's quarters.

He looked around in interest, noting that Lucas kept watching him. He wasn't entirely surprised to see Darwin turn up, watching them through the window over Lucas's bed. He suspected that Darwin knew more than he was telling—but whether he was keeping secrets on purpose or simply because he couldn't describe the answers the Doctor wanted, he couldn't tell.

Lucas was quick to call up the captain. "Lucas?" Bridger asked from his position on the bridge. "What is it?"

"We've got, um, an unauthorized visitor, Captain," Lucas said, pulling the Doctor into view.

"Hello!" the Doctor said, waving. "I'm the Doctor. Pleased to meet you. Well, I'll be more pleased when I meet you in person, but—"

"What is this?" Bridger asked, looking, for a moment, utterly perplexed. He looked at Lucas. "Is this some sort of joke, Lucas?"

"No, Captain," Lucas said. "He must've come on board—"

"Lucas, the last person to come on board was Dr. Westphalen, and that was over a week ago. No one would have been able to remain on _seaQuest_ that long undetected even if he had come aboard then."

The Doctor, realizing that Bridger still doubted that he wasn't just some hologram or something that Lucas had managed to develop, inclined his head in acknowledgement. "No, I doubt someone would be able to do that," he agreed. "I would have liked to meet you on better terms, Captain Bridger. Do you mind if I have Lucas here take me up to the bridge? I'll explain myself then, if I must." The Doctor wasn't entirely sure what he planned to say, but it wouldn't do to have the captain immediately distrusting him. He had the distinct feeling that if he was to figure out what that strange feeling was, he'd need to be able to trust Bridger and have his trust in return.

Bridger's brow furrowed for a moment. "No," he said. "No, that's quite all right. I'll come to you. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Lucas." And before the Doctor could say anything else, the link went dead.

This wasn't, the Doctor had to admit, how he'd thought he'd be received. Well, how he'd _hoped_ to be received, at any rate. He put on a smile anyway; it wasn't as if things couldn't have been worse. And he'd faced worse, many times. So there was really nothing to worry about. Comparatively.

Well, except for that feeling he couldn't pin down.

But he'd figure that out in time.

He always did.

Usually.

* * *

A/N: Just a quick thanks to Questfan, darkin520, and Jerikagoddess for reviewing; I always appreciate it!


	3. Chapter 3

Captain Nathan Bridger wasn't entirely sure what to make of Lucas's call or the unexpected news that _seaQuest_ had apparently picked up a stowaway. He'd been startled when Lieutenant Tim O'Neill had informed him of Lucas's call, but he'd quickly seen the reason why the call hadn't simply been by radio alone.

"Captain?" Commander Jonathan Ford asked. "Do you want us to go on alert?"

Bridger considered this for a few seconds before discarding the suggestion. "Not yet, Commander," he said. "If this doctor had meant to harm us and needed the element of surprise, he wouldn't have let Lucas make that call." Turning, Bridger called, "Mr. Ortiz, was there any sort of disruption that would have let this man board undetected?"

Sensor Chief Miguel Ortiz shook his head. "Negative, sir," he replied. "Not unless he managed to hack into our systems and plant a virus to disrupt our sensors without leaving any surface traces. I can check the WSKRS' logs," he added, referring to the wireless sea knowledge retrieval satellites, "but I can't make any guarantees."

"You do that," Bridger agreed. "Commander Hitchcock, I'd like you to run a systems diagnostic to be on the safe side. Note down anything that's even slightly off the norm." Lieutenant Commander Katie Hitchcock accepted this command with a quick nod of her head and a quiet 'yes, sir' before getting to work. "O'Neill," he continued, "intercept and shut down any outgoing calls and alert me immediately to any incoming ones." After O'Neill acknowledged the order, Bridger looked to his security officer, Chief Manilow Crocker. "Crocker, get a team together and question the crew. See if anyone noticed anything unusual. But make sure there's no cause for alarm; we have no reason to believe that our guest is dangerous."

"Right away, sir," Crocker said, taking his leave.

"Commander Ford, take over. Make sure _seaQuest_ maintains her position."

"Of course, Captain."

Bridger headed down to C deck, not quite sure why the intrusion bothered him so much. It wasn't just the obvious breach of security or the disturbing competency with which it had been done. He had mixed feelings about the intruder himself. His first impression wasn't a clear one. The man didn't act like he was a threat, all smiles and talkative as he was, yet it was hard to call him anything else when he had managed to slip onto their ship without anyone noticing.

Captain Bridger paused outside Lucas's quarters for a moment before shaking his head to dislodge his thoughts. He raised a hand to knock, but Lucas opened the door before he had a chance to. The intruder was sitting on Lucas's bed, calmly waiting.

"I'm Captain Nathan Bridger," he said, looking pointedly at the brown haired British man.

The man grinned and jumped up to shake his hand. "It's an honour, sir," he said, his grin widening. "I've heard loads." There was a slight pause, and the man's brown eyes became troubled. "I'm, ah, sorry about your son. Robert, wasn't it?"

Bridger bristled at the painful reminder, but nodded his thanks. "Who are you," he asked, resuming his composure, "and how did you get aboard my ship?"

"I'm the Doctor, as I said," the Doctor replied.

Bridger waited, glancing at Lucas to make sure the boy kept his silence.

The Doctor seemed to be waiting, too, and looked slightly disappointed as he added, "Just the Doctor, mind. I could tell you that my name's John Smith, but I don't expect that you want to hear any lies."

"Not particularly, no," Bridger agreed. "But how did you get on board, and what is your purpose here?"

"I came alone," the Doctor said, not answering the question, "so you don't need to worry about that. And I'm not entirely sure why I'm here, either. I've a few suspicions, but judging from what I've seen, if they were the reason for my being here, I would've arrived earlier."

The man was dodging the questions. "Who are you?" Bridger repeated.

The Doctor seemed to realize that the captain wanted to know more than just his name. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, flipping it open. "This may answer some of your questions," he said quietly.

Bridger watched with interest as Lucas gave a start. He glanced at the wallet himself and shook his head. "It doesn't," he said simply. Blank paper never did provide answers, not in his experience.

The Doctor glanced at the wallet he held, then at Lucas, as if remembering the boy's reaction, and then at Bridger. "So it doesn't," he agreed softly, looking at Bridger with new respect.

"But, Captain," Lucas protested, "he—"

Bridger held up his hand, stilling the teen's objections. "Who are you?" he repeated again.

The Doctor pocketed his wallet. But when he spoke, he was still avoiding the question. "You're a bit psychic, aren't you?" he asked.

Bridger recalled what Savannah Rossovich had told him so many months ago, after they'd discovered an annex of Alexandria's great library—that he had a strong psi factor. But he'd denied it then, despite what she'd shown him, and he denied it now. "No," he said, speaking what he still believed to be the truth. "I'm just looking for straight answers."

"You might be in for a bit of a search," the Doctor warned him. "I'm not exactly known for giving straight answers."

"Then I would advise that you try to break yourself of a bad habit," Bridger suggested dryly.

The Doctor gave an apologetic shrug. "It's not as simple as that." He glanced around, his gaze finding Lucas's computer. "Tell you what," he proposed softly. "We'll swap answers, shall we? I tell you what you want to know, and you tell me what I want to know, and once you tell me what I want to know, I might have a better idea of why I'm here and be better able to answer your questions."

Bridger shook his head. "Tell me how you got on my ship. That's a simpler answer than why you came, isn't it?"

"Well, you'd think," the Doctor muttered. Bridger knew enough to wait, and the Doctor did finally continue. "I don't mean to be a threat to you or your crew, Captain, but if any of you are the reason I came, I can promise you that I won't walk away without doing anything. But I won't act, possibly harming any of them, until I know they've made their choice and are standing against me." He closed his eyes. "I want to say that this will end just fine, that there won't be any casualties, but I can't make that promise, no matter how much I want to."

The man looked weary now, and far older than he had a moment before. When he opened his eyes, Bridger saw sincerity in them, along with regret and pain—and he knew the man wasn't lying. "Do you want a similar guarantee?" Bridger wondered.

The Doctor hesitated before answering, looking like he was choosing his words carefully. "I would," he allowed, "but it isn't exactly a necessity. I don't think you can do anything to me that I can't recover from, or put me anywhere that I can't escape."

Lucas snorted, spoiling the mood. "Are you kidding?" he asked incredulously. "You do know where you are, don't you?"

"Oh, yes," the Doctor confirmed quietly. "I do. But I've been in worse places and in tighter spots and I've escaped them. Not always without help, but most of the time, I managed it."

Bridger studied the Doctor. He was completely serious and utterly honest, at least at the moment. He was older than he looked, likely as not, and he'd seen more than anyone should have. He'd been in battle, for one. He had that calculated look about him. But it was more than that. He seemed to carry more pain with him, more guilt, than anyone should. It was a hard burden to bear, but he wouldn't share it, because he felt like he deserved it. He was strong, far stronger than he looked—he'd been broken, more than once, but he'd come back from that, and was stronger for it. He looked like he'd seen more pain and suffering and death—perhaps even caused it, be it intentionally or unwittingly—than he had years.

But there was some recent pain that reflected in his eyes, a shadow of some recent guilt that was fresh enough to temper his actions, causing him to pause in his words or perhaps even stop in his tracks. That didn't mean it held power over him—Bridger would hate to see what would become of the man foolish enough to try to use that pain against the Doctor—but it was enough to keep him from being too reckless, too careless.

Whoever he was, the man had seen enough death to treasure life, but he still had the look of someone who would kill one who was a threat in order to preserve the lives of others if there was no other way, even if he didn't like it.

If he knew nothing else, Captain Nathan Bridger was certain that he did not want this man for an enemy.

"Nevertheless, you have my guarantee in return, Doctor," Bridger said. "However, I would request that, if you will not answer my questions now, you will at least submit to an examination by our ship's medical officer to determine your health status and to ensure that you pose no biological threat, intended or otherwise, to us."

The Doctor smiled wryly. "You want to run my DNA through your database to find out who I really am," he interpreted. He shrugged. "You won't get any matches. I'm not in there."

"You have to be," Lucas countered, with all the confidence of one who believed he was completely knowledgeable in the technological ways of the world and everything that was born from that technology. "Everyone is, unless you've just dropped off the face of the Earth for the last ten years. You can't apply for a job, let alone go for a check-up, unless you're in the world database. It's required."

The Doctor shrugged. "I don't often get ill, or at least so ill that I can't handle things myself or with a bit of help from a friend," he explained, "and none of the jobs I've had recently lasted very long."

"But—"

"I'm sure if you have powerful enough friends, Lucas, you could avoid it," Bridger interrupted, laying a hand on the teen's shoulder. Remembering a few other encounters he'd had in the last year, he added, "Or if you faked your own death."

"They'd still have your information on file," Lucas protested, though he couldn't dispute Bridger's first point.

The Doctor shook his head. "It's not even that," he said. "Powerful friends, yes, I probably do have a few, if they're still around, but I wouldn't need to ask them to do something like that when I could do it myself. But my point is that I never needed to. I was never put into the database."

"How'd you manage that, then?" Lucas challenged.

"You said it yourself," the Doctor answered quietly. "I dropped off the face of the Earth."

Lucas looked unconvinced, and Bridger decided it was time to take control of the conversation again. "Will you consent, Doctor?"

"You aren't really giving me a choice," the Doctor pointed out. "Though I have to say I do appreciate that you are pretending to; it appears to be much nicer, and it's a pleasant change not to be threatened at gunpoint. I don't fancy guns." He paused, then asked, "What _sort_ of examination?"

"A thorough one," Bridger replied.

The Doctor frowned. "Blood pressure and everything, then?"

Bridger raised his eyebrows at the Doctor's displeasure and deadpanned, "I would like to be confident that someone who turns up on my ship isn't going to drop dead on me before I get some answers."

"Well, I don't have a habit of dropping dead," the Doctor informed him—but the humour that Bridger had expected wasn't there. "And when I have before, well, I've continued on, as you can see."

"Do you refuse, then?"

The Doctor sighed. "I'd like to," he answered, "but I have the strangest feeling that my refusal wouldn't make the slightest difference."

He was afraid of what they'd find, Bridger figured. But it was a different kind of fear than he would have expected; it wasn't a terrified fear, quietly controlled, of someone who faced the exposure of their entire grand scheme or anything of that sort, but rather a resigned fear, as if it things would simply be more difficult once they'd discovered what he was hiding but could still be dealt with accordingly. It was a secret, then—one that he was used to keeping but willing to tell if necessary.

Considering that the Doctor had turned up on _seaQuest_ without any warning whatsoever, claiming not to be entirely sure why he'd come himself and offering them no explanation of anything, the exchange could have gone very differently. The man might be dangerous, Bridger thought, and he'd admitted as much, but he didn't act like he wanted to harm any of them. That was perhaps why their exchange was somewhat courteous and cordial, filled with regrets and avoidances and dry wit as opposed to threats and warnings and actions.

"Well, all right then," the Doctor said, relenting. "But only if you don't _tell _everyone."

"Is there a reason I might want to do that?" Bridger asked noncommittally.

"Some would say so," the Doctor answered. "Of course, a select few would do a lot worse than that, but I trust your medical officer will be polite enough about it and contain his curiosity."

"Her curiosity," Bridger corrected. "I'll be having Dr. Kristin Westphalen look at you."

The Doctor stared off into space for a moment, and Bridger saw his face change as he placed the name. He'd heard of her, then. That might help them narrow down who he actually was. "Good," he said, nodding. "She's seen enough, if I remember correctly."

"Enough of what?" Lucas asked, his tone almost scoffing, as if he had decided the Doctor was absolutely nuts—something Bridger himself was convinced was not the case in the least.

"Enough of the things," the Doctor answered carefully, "that you lot would, I hope, keep out of the official reports." He grinned then. "Or, put more simply, enough of the sort of things that has her doubting how solid her science is." He jumped to his feet. "Where are we off to, then? Main science lab?"

Bridger started, and realized why the man had agreed so readily to something he wasn't entirely keen about. He wanted to go to the science lab; he just hadn't been able to find it, apparently, before Lucas had intercepted him.

For a moment, Bridger wanted to deny it and have Dr. Westphalen check the Doctor over elsewhere, but he decided against it. If the Doctor was so intent on going to the science lab, which happened to be joined with their med bay—though not the sick bay, which was the other main option in terms of examination rooms—then they would let him. Otherwise, he'd find his way to it unsupervised. This way, they might be able to glean something of his intentions.

Besides, he'd be under Dr. Westphalen's care then, and if he proved to be too troublesome, it was doubtless that she would be able to trick him into the hyperbaric chamber under one pretence or another. He did not appear to be the sort of person who reigned in his antics before they got too out of hand. And, since the man clearly loved to talk, even if he didn't say very much of anything with value, it was possible Dr. Kristin Westphalen would be able to make sense of something he came out with or perhaps even get him to let something slip. It wouldn't be easy—the man looked like he guarded his words carefully—but Bridger had confidence in her. If anyone could convince him to say something, she ought to be able to.

"Yes," Bridger answered at length, though he hoped he wouldn't later regret his reply. He glanced at Lucas and decided he could learn a thing or two. "Lucas will escort you."

"But, Captain—"

"It'll do you good, Lucas," Bridger pointed out. He nodded at the Doctor, who was still grinning like a loon, and took his leave, heading for the bridge. He hoped that, by the time he got there, someone would be able to tell him how the man had gotten aboard. Then, perhaps, they could begin sorting everything out.

* * *

Dr. Westphalen was understandably startled—even after Lucas explained the situation, recounting how he'd found the Doctor talking to Darwin and then the conversation with the captain—but she accepted it nonetheless. She had, however, frowned at the Doctor's apparent lack of a name. "You'd think you'd be used to it," the Doctor pointed out. "There are military officers on this vessel, after all. Don't you ever just say captain, or commander, or lieutenant, or—?"

"I know what you mean, Doctor," Dr. Westphalen interrupted. "I simply meant to say that I would feel more comfortable using your name."

"If it cheers you up," the Doctor informed her, "I don't really use any other name besides 'the Doctor'."

"But you still have one," she reminded him stiffly.

The Doctor looked sombre for a moment. "Not one that I use, and I can only think of two people in this universe who know it." He paused, then added, "Well, one, now." The Master was dead, and River wasn't yet born—and his double that Donna had unwittingly created wasn't in this universe anymore. And Donna…if she had known it, even if she hadn't _realized_ that she'd known it at the time, bathed in all the new knowledge as she had been, she'd forgotten it now, and she wouldn't ever remember. Or at least, he hoped she wouldn't. She didn't deserve the fate she'd get if she did.

Dr. Westphalen didn't bother answering him, instead fitting a stethoscope to her ears and gesturing for him to lift his shirt. The Doctor sighed, but unbuttoned his suit jacket and shucked it off. He then obliged Dr. Westphalen's request, lifting the shirt beneath, watching her face. He should have known that she would start with this.

He saw confusion first, which deepened into perplexity. He wasn't the only one to note this, apparently, because Lucas, who had been watching, asked, "What's wrong?"

"It's not right," Dr. Westphalen murmured in reply, still listening intently.

"I'm holding you to Captain Bridger's promise," the Doctor warned them—for even if Nathan Bridger hadn't _promised_, exactly, the Doctor knew he'd keep the secret anyway. Then he lifted one hand to move the stethoscope to one side, saying, "Here." After a few beats, he moved it again, this time to the other side of his chest.

Dr. Westphalen had paled. "You've got two hearts," she exclaimed softly, still not believing it.

The Doctor, ignoring Lucas's enthusiastic exclamation, replied quietly, "Working perfectly, I can assure you. As they ought to be."

"But there are bound to be complications," Dr. Westphalen protested, even though she was still careful to keep her voice down.

The Doctor shook his head. "You're jumping to conclusions. And I really don't blame you. People usually do. But you have to trust me; something's wrong, and I don't know what it is, but I have to fix it, and being here is my best bet to discover what that is."

"That's what you were asking Darwin about," Lucas guessed.

The Doctor nodded. "That I was," he confirmed. "And I can still feel it in here, even if I don't know what it is. I thought perhaps it might be stronger in here, if it was a result of something you lot were doing. Well, that, and I was hoping to analyze this." He drew out a handkerchief from his pocket—clean, except for the few silicon crystals it held.

Dr. Westphalen glanced at it, then took it from him and placed it on a nearby table. "After we're finished the examination," she said.

The Doctor frowned. "You mean you're going to finish it?" He hadn't thought she would, actually. Generally people accepted him or denounced him or strapped him somewhere until they could analyze him. They rarely dragged the preliminary examinations on.

"That was the captain's order," Dr. Westphalen replied, quirking an eyebrow at him.

He stared at her. "But we don't have _time_!" he cried. He paused, then amended, "Well, at least I don't _think_ we do."

"If you're so intent on getting a bit of sand analyzed, I can have someone else do it," Dr. Westphalen told him, picking up another machine to use on him. He eyed it warily—it looked like the sort of thing that took blood. He didn't fancy being pricked.

"They won't know what to look for," the Doctor complained.

"Then I'm afraid you'll just have to wait."

The Doctor pulled a face. "Just do me a favour, then, and when you _don't_ get a match in that database of yours, don't tell the UEO immediately. It's so much easier to get things done when I don't have the military on my back. I have enough trouble with UNIT when I deal with them, and they've gotten loads worse over the years, so I hate to think what your UEO is going to do if they get their hands on me."

"UNIT?" Lucas repeated, frowning—as if he'd heard the name, once, just in passing, but couldn't remember where. The Doctor sincerely hoped he hadn't. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what that would mean.

"Never mind that," the Doctor said, hoping to distract him. "What's important is that we get this over with as quickly as possible. Dr. Westphalen, I— Ow!" The Doctor jerked back, rubbing his arm. "That _hurt_," he grumbled. He took his eyes off of her for _one second_ and she went and pricked him. Well, _prick_ made it sound as if the needle hadn't been very big. It had been, and she'd gone and jabbed it into him without so much as a by-your-leave or even a warning.

Needles and the like didn't bother him, normally. He didn't exactly _like_ them—he had too many unpleasant memories to associate with them for that—but he didn't hate them, either. But something had him on edge. He wasn't going to question his surprisingly non-hostile acceptance onboard, but he was darn well ready to question everything else. _Something_ wanted to keep him from investigating whatever had gone wrong, and he wouldn't let it.

"Sorry," Dr. Westphalen said, but by the tone of her voice and the smile on her face, the Doctor knew she didn't mean it. "You were saying?"

"There's a good reason I'm not in that database of yours," the Doctor informed her shortly. "And the sooner you realize that, the better." He glanced back at the silicon crystals and decided to take a gamble. "Were you both on board when _seaQuest_ encountered the N'zyritians?" He was nearly absolutely sure that the silicon crystals were traces of residue left by the N'zyritians. The main flaw in that thinking was that the residue ought to have degraded, but then he supposed he could always chalk that up to the circumstances. Besides, the N'zyritians had been wiped out in the War. Well, most of them had been, he thought. He wasn't entirely certain. Perhaps enough had escaped to rebuild a new society elsewhere.

He could only hope.

Given the nature of the N'zyritian race, however, it was just possible that a few had found themselves stuck on Earth long before the War. It may not have been intentional; one never knew when things would go wrong. But, given their nature, it was possible that they'd intended for it to be a one-way trip. Still, if the _seaQuest_ and her crew had been the first ones to come across them, then the N'zyritians must have run their ship aground—and he wouldn't put it past Earth's weather to have buried it beneath the sea for years upon years upon years. Of course, the N'zyritians wouldn't, necessarily, have survived that. They could hibernate, yes, putting themselves into a dormancy cycle, a sort of suspended animation, but that wouldn't have extended their lives indefinitely. The older ones probably wouldn't have survived this long, but a young one might have. They were long-lived, after all.

Granted, from the taste of the residue, the N'zyritian who had found itself aboard Bridger's vessel had been dying, anyway. He would be surprised if the xyrethin ring it wore around its wrist to keep its atoms in suspended animation for such a long period of time would have lasted much longer anyway. And since the N'zyritian had woken, the xyrethin ring must have recalibrated once _seaQuest_ had stumbled upon its ship, and allowed its wearer to travel in the safest way possible for the species in a world with such a different gravity—by collapsing its molecular structure when it encountered something solid, allowing it to pass through the intermolecular spaces of a barrier and reassemble itself on the other side. A process which, the Doctor knew, left behind a silicon residue with each and every pass. And since the N'zyritians were silicon-based beings, they could only do that so many times without harm to themselves—at least when they weren't in an atmosphere with a higher concentration of silicon contained in it than that of Earth's, no matter how much could be found in Earth's crust.

Even so, that knowledge hadn't caused them to deviate in their efforts to contact lesser species on other planets. He admired them for that. Hadn't run into too many, himself, but he'd heard of them. They'd been peaceful.

They hadn't taken a side in the War, but they'd suffered, anyway. Their planet had been too close to a major battle site. When the War became time-locked, it took everything that had been irreparably marred by its destruction with it. Considering that, the Doctor wouldn't have been surprised to learn that the N'zyritians and their ship had been dissolved—or rather, reduced to their atoms and elements—shortly after they'd been discovered. Anything weakened by so much time wouldn't have been able to resist that force, unlike others who had simply been away from their planet when things had finally—

Still, it wouldn't have broken down immediately. It couldn't have been immediately. Not if a single N'zyritian had managed to deliver its message and convince _seaQuest_ to send a welcoming message in return. That would make sense, the Doctor reasoned, so it had to be what had happened. After all, the transmission _had_ been sent in the direction of what the humans called the M-100 galaxy, where the N'zyritian home planet had once been.

Even if humans had had technology advanced enough to detect a difference in something that had happened on the other side of that galaxy, they would probably have put it down to something they called a reasonable explanation. They'd probably put it down to human or technological error. It was just as well. He wouldn't have liked to explain things. Not when so much of it was partially his fault.

Lucas and Dr. Westphalen both were staring at him. "I beg your pardon?" Dr. Westphalen asked.

"Were you both on board when you lot ran into the N'zyritians? Well, at least the one N'zyritian." The blank looks didn't change, and the Doctor sighed. "They aren't hard to miss. Humanoid. Tall, sort of lanky. Yellow. You wouldn't be able to talk to them, mind. Their communication frequency's out of your range."

Dr. Westphalen's look turned to one of stunned horror, and Lucas's to one of incredulous excitement. "You know about that? _Cool_."

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. I'd hoped, seeing as the captain clearly trusts you two."

"How—?" Dr. Westphalen couldn't get the words out. She just shook her head.

"I caught the tail end of your transmission," the Doctor explained, "and managed to trace it here." Well, the TARDIS had, at least. "Never mind how; that's not important. I don't know how long ago that was, but when I went looking for traces, I found that—" and here he pointed to the silicon crystals "—and I put two and two together."

Dr. Westphalen shook her head. "What we _saw_," she said, "was merely a hologram, or something similar. It attracted free-floating silicon particles with some sort of magnetic field. It wasn't—"

"It _was_," the Doctor interrupted. "Though I wouldn't expect you to know that, and your explanation was, for a change, reasonable, even if you were wrong."

"But how do you know about that?" Dr. Westphalen asked softly.

"I'm clever," the Doctor replied, "and, as I said, I put two and two together."

"But you called them— What was it?" Lucas asked. "Ni—?"

"N'zyritians," the Doctor corrected. "Because that's what they are. Well, were."

"Were?" Lucas repeated.

"Your transmission was sent to a dead race," the Doctor answered. "Well, a scattered one, at any rate. I'm not sure how many are left. I don't know if you'll get a response. You'll be lucky if you do. But that's why it caught my attention. Well, one of the reasons, anyway."

"But how would you know that?" Dr. Westphalen challenged.

"I'm clever," the Doctor answered, echoing his earlier words.

Dr. Westphalen crossed her arms, frowning. "Who exactly are you?" she asked.

"The Doctor," the Doctor replied, grinning. For other species, that was all the answer that was ever needed, and it was all he intended to give right now.

Dr. Westphalen exchanged a glance with Lucas. "Lucas," she began, "I'm going to finish my examination. In the meantime, why don't you—?"

"I'm on it," Lucas replied, cutting her off.

He was grinning.

That was enough to wipe the grin off the Doctor's face.

He suddenly had the distinct feeling that he wouldn't be keeping as many secrets as he would have liked. All he could do was hope that they didn't do anything to stop him from figuring out what was wrong. He was sure they wouldn't do it intentionally, but if they were as curious as they looked, he'd still have his work cut out for him.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I am aware that those yellow aliens do make a reappearance in the second season (thank you, Questfan!), but I'm not sure exactly how much I'm contradicting otherwise (probably a great deal, but I couldn't ask Questfan _everything_, now could I? I'd be giving my storyline (or random pieces of it) away if I did.), so please do forgive me. Um, literary license? Same goes with Bridger and the psychic paper, really, though that decision's better defended. Anyway, many thanks to those who take the time to review; I really appreciate it.


	4. Chapter 4

Scarcely twenty minutes after he'd returned to the bridge, though it was enough time to determine that no one had managed to turn up anything about their unexpected visitor's arrival, Bridger got a call from Lucas. Dr. Westphalen had finished her examination and determined that the Doctor was, physically, perfectly healthy as far as she could tell. She'd allowed him to use her equipment to analyze some sand he'd found—sand that, apparently, was left over from their alien encounter. Before the Doctor could get into any trouble, though, she'd firmly suggested that they return to Lucas's room, and he had whole-heartedly agreed. Now, they wanted the captain to join them.

They also thought he might want to get in contact with Commander Scott Keller and invite him aboard, though they hadn't said why.

"What's this all about?" Bridger asked when he entered Lucas's quarters. The boy was beaming, the Doctor looked sour, and Dr. Westphalen's expression was unreadable. Well, not quite—she looked like she'd found something that had shocked her, and though she'd gotten over it, she still wasn't sure what to make of it. "Why do you think I should call in Scott?"

"They seem to think he'd want to meet me," the Doctor replied glumly. He sighed, and stood up. Gesturing to the spot on Lucas's bed that he'd vacated, he said, "You might want to sit down, Captain."

Bridger raised his eyebrows, but did so. "Well?" he asked, looking around at the three of them.

"I didn't find it necessary to run the Doctor's DNA through the database," Dr. Westphalen began carefully, her voice sounding somewhat hollow.

Bridger opened his mouth to reply, but Lucas beat him to it, grinning. "He's an alien, Captain."

The Doctor frowned. "That's putting it nicely, isn't it? I'll have you know you lot are all aliens to _me_."

Bridger found his gaze settling on Dr. Westphalen. After a moment, she nodded. "He's certainly not human," she confirmed. "His core temperature alone would…." She shook her head, not bothering to finish.

Bridger looked back at the Doctor. The man—alien—shrugged. "Lower than yours," he said by way of explanation. "But, I'll have you remember that you _implied_ that you wouldn't tell anyone else." He hesitated, then added, "Well, I did run into a Lieutenant Krieg earlier. He, er, might bring something up about me being an official or inspector of sorts, if he's pretending to let something slip for attention. I told him I was pretending to be a visiting doctor intent on learning about the scientific experiments you conducted here."

Bridger raised an eyebrow, but refrained from commenting on that. "You sound British," he observed.

"I can _sound_ many things," the Doctor said. "From a highland burr," he started, slipping into a Scottish accent and seeming to take great joy in rolling his Rs, "to more a regional twang, like a southern state drawl," he continued, "to something that really doesn't sound like much of an accent to you at all," he finished, mimicking Bridger's own accent. Resuming his normal voice, he added, "But, I'd rather something less distinctive. Last time I was told that I sounded like I came from the north. Of England," he clarified.

Bridger crossed his arms. "So if you're not from Earth, how is it that you know English?"

"I know a lot of languages," the Doctor replied, "and Earth is a favourite planet of mine. I've been to Britain frequently, more often than anywhere else. It seems to attract more attention than it should."

Bridger digested this information without comment. "You look human," was all he said.

Those words must have reminded the Doctor of something because he visibly paled, just for a moment. "Yes, on the outside," he finally agreed, "but I'm sure the good Dr. Westphalen can assure you that I am, most definitely, not human, appearances aside."

"So where are you really from?"

The Doctor looked like he'd rather be doing anything other than answering questions, but he responded all the same. "Gallifrey. In the constellation Kasterborous." He nodded at Lucas. "As I'm sure he could tell you. He got into some of UNIT's records. They must have been getting sloppy. I mean, hacked in less than fifteen minutes? I would've thought they'd've kept up with the technology of the times. Not that he got _everything_, but he did manage to get hold of my file. I wouldn't have thought they'd've put it on their computer database, but…." He shook his head. "I'd've removed it if I'd known. Paper records are enough."

Bridger looked at Lucas again. "Why do I get the feeling that you're keeping the best part from me?"

"Because he is," Dr. Westphalen replied, glancing at the Doctor.

The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. "I'm a time traveller," he confessed. "Specifically, I'm a Time Lord. That's who I am, as surely as you three are humans. And how I got on board your ship, Captain Bridger, was with my own. She's called the TARDIS. A time-space ship, to put it simply. But I'm no closer to finding out _why_ I came here than I was last time we had a little chat."

"You've got a spaceship on board _seaQuest_?" Bridger asked, remembering the last—and only—one he'd seen.

"Without damaging anything," the Doctor said, answering the unspoken question. "Don't worry about her. She's dimensionally transcendental. Takes up no more room than a police box." He looked agitated now, like he wanted the questioning to end. Bridger didn't blame him, but he wasn't about to oblige immediately.

"Do you understand this?" Bridger asked, glancing at the scientist.

Dr. Westphalen took a deep breath. "Some of it," she allowed.

"And you?" Bridger continued, looking at Lucas.

"Trying my best, Captain," he replied, grinning. "Now, I haven't looked at everything, but—"

"But that's enough for now, all right?" the Doctor interrupted. "I'm not sure I have time for this. I told you who I am and how I got here, and I'd _like_ to know why I'm here, preferably before I'm too late to do anything." He gently pushed Lucas away from the computer. He slipped on a pair of glasses from his pocket, looked at the screen for a moment, and then began rapidly typing.

Lucas cried out, apparently making more sense of the pop-ups than he was. "What exactly are you doing?" Bridger asked.

"Corrupting this file," the Doctor replied cheerfully. When he finished, he spun around in the chair and looked at Bridger. "I didn't ask permission to come aboard, Captain, and I'm sorry for that, so I'm asking it now. Will you let me do my work?"

"What sort of work?" Bridger asked.

"He was a scientific advisor for UNIT about fifty years ago," Lucas piped up.

"I thought you said you hadn't read my file," the Doctor muttered, the accusation clear in his voice.

"I said I hadn't read _everything_," Lucas corrected.

The Doctor frowned, but shook his head, and Bridger thought he was fighting a smile. He wasn't angry at Lucas; if anything, he looked impressed. "None of you can feel it," he said, "but there's something here. Like the force you feel when you try to put the like poles of two magnets together. There's resistance, and tension, and I feel like every time I _think_ I'm getting close to the source, I slip aside and find myself elsewhere. Originally, I came here when I was trying to find out about that microwave transmission you sent off to the M-100 galaxy, but now that I'm here, and I can feel this, I think there's something else that drew me here simply by trying to push me away. And if it's something that I can sense and you can't, then it's something that I have to deal with. And I will. That's what I do." He paused. "I would appreciate it if you don't follow that alien encounter program Dr. Westphalen told me about."

"Would you also prefer if I stripped this boat down to a skeletal crew again?" Bridger asked in a bland voice, even though his question didn't reflect, entirely accurately, what had happened last time.

The Doctor looked at him for a moment before answering, "Yes, actually, I would. But I'd rather you didn't tell the UEO." He hesitated, then added, "Your friend aside, I suppose, if you must. Though, from what I understand, he's not exactly UEO." Before Bridger could comment, the Doctor continued, "If you tell me who I need to contact, I can convince them to _order_ you down to a bare minimum. Say, your bridge crew and a few scientists."

"And what would you tell them to do that?" Bridger queried, letting the scepticism leak into his voice.

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, I only need to start, and they'll draw their own conclusions from there. Are we agreed, Captain Bridger? You let me have the majority of your crew ordered off your ship, and you get to invite your friend here for a visit?"

Bridger still found it all a bit hard to believe, and Dr. Westphalen didn't seem to be coping much better, but Lucas was taking it all in stride, just like he had last time. And now here he was, bargaining with a time travelling alien who just happened to speak English because he had a liking for Earth. Not that he was entirely sure it was fair bargaining—the Doctor seemed to have the upper hand.

He'd seen a lot over the years, and even more since he had taken command of _seaQuest_, but he had the feeling that this would be stranger than anything yet. Considering it had to top ghost ships and alien encounters and bioluminescent fish feces, he wasn't sure what he was going to be getting into. But even if he hadn't wanted to be swept along, he figured it was too late. He was caught in the current, and he'd have to ride it out.

His decision made, Captain Nathan Bridger began listing the names of the people the Doctor would want to contact in the UEO.

* * *

Bridger, who had been going over the captain's log in his quarters, received a call from Secretary General Bill Noyce—the once admiral but still friend—within the hour. O'Neill patched it through, and Noyce appeared on the video screen. "Nathan," he began, looking reluctant, "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but we're going to have to inconvenience you again."

"Inconvenience?" Bridger repeated, raising his eyebrows.

"It involves that alien ship you encountered a while back," Noyce continued. Very few people knew about that, even in the UEO, but General Thomas had been obliged to involve a few others, and Noyce had been one of those selected, even if it wasn't, technically, in his area of expertise. "Now, I know you said in your report that nothing came of it and that the ship's hull integrity had been compromised before your crew managed to get in to get a good look, but, despite all our precautions, something must have been leaked somewhere, because we've had this Dr. John Smith rattling our chains for weeks now."

"Weeks?" Bridger echoed, surprised.

Noyce sighed. "I know what you're thinking, Nathan, and you don't have to worry; we've kept it contained. But persistence pays off. General Thomas himself has given him permission to come aboard and ask you and your crew questions. This Dr. Smith claims to be an expert in the area, and he insists that access to the files is not enough. He figures he might be able to say something to jog your memories and seems to believe that he has a chance of identifying who that ship belonged to."

"And how does he propose to do that?" Bridger asked sceptically.

Noyce shook his head. "I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, he probably belongs in the loony bin, but I'm told he's provided General Thomas proof of discoveries similar to yours that have been buried over the years. I don't think he wants to identify the species that used that ship as much as he wants to see if he can work out whether or not there's been a similar ship found."

Bridger crossed his arms. "Let me guess: if he wants to question us, we're going to have to ship off everyone on board who wasn't informed of our discovery."

"I'm afraid so," Noyce confirmed. "Our ship should reach in you in about forty-five minutes."

"So I'm not even given a say in the matter," Bridger concluded, doing his best to appear exasperated. "Do you have any good news, Bill?"

"Scott Keller's going to be coming with Dr. Smith. He did, after all, find evidence of those snails on Mars."

"A snail wouldn't have built that spaceship, Bill," Bridger reminded him.

Noyce smirked. "I know, Nathan. I know. But Dr. Smith believes that he might remember something else when he's with the others you sent out to examine the outer face of that ship, so he's hoping to question them together. I may not have heard of him, Nathan, but I'm told he has impeccable references." There was a pause. "If you've got a good memory for sideline news, I can tell you that he claims to have helped to overthrow Henry van Statten in Salt Lake City in 2012." At Bridger's frown, Noyce added, "He was the CEO of GeoComTex before the company went belly-up after the presidential election. He also supposedly had an extensive collection of alien artefacts and attracted this guy's attention."

"But you've cleared him?" Bridger asked carefully. "It's one thing to have heard rumours; it's quite another to be granted interviews and a grand tour of _seaQuest_."

"Of course he's been cleared," Noyce responded, chuckling at the thought of the converse being true. "Orders from the top. The man has some good connections."

"So it would seem," Bridger agreed, wondering how that was possible if the Doctor wasn't, as he claimed, in the world genetic database. "And where am I to meet your ship, Bill?" He listened to the response and then excused himself with the intention of telling Commander Ford immediately. The call ended, and Bridger was left with the information with which Noyce had presented him. The Doctor had begun badgering the UEO _weeks_ ago—well, that at least explained why he'd been so intent on finding out the exact date of their encounter with the aliens, whatever he'd called them. And, if nothing else, it confirmed that the Doctor hadn't been lying. He was, most certainly, a time traveller.

* * *

Commander Scott Keller was pleasantly surprised by how well informed of his expeditions to Mars Dr. John Smith seemed to be. He'd never heard of the man, despite all his accolades, but they were clearly well deserved—he was sharp. He asked questions Keller himself had been curious to find the answers to, and the way he worded things told Keller he knew a good deal about the proposed geological history of Mars itself.

They were seated beside each other on the launch headed down to the _seaQuest_. "When I was a kid," Keller started, "I never thought I'd see the day that the human race would be able to conquer the seas."

Dr. Smith shrugged. "Not really conquering yet, is it? A few bases here and there, the odd prospectors, more now than there used to be, granted, but it's just exploring, for the most part. You don't know most of what's out there. But you would've been dreaming of the stars, wouldn't you, and not the seas, if you managed to reach Mars?"

Keller grinned. "I did dream of that," he admitted. "And who knows? Maybe we'll have established a base there within the next fifty years."

"Forty," Dr. Smith corrected absently.

"Pardon?"

Dr. Smith blinked. "Oh, sorry. I was just…thinking. I'd said forty. I think that's a closer bet, don't you? Well, maybe just thirty-nine. 2058, that'll be. I bet it'll be a memorable year."

"Well, if you're right, I hope I'm around to see it."

"2059'll be memorable, too," Dr. Smith murmured. "Shame it'll be for all the wrong reasons. But at least they'll know now why—" He broke off when he noticed Keller looking at him, shaking his head. "Don't mind me. Sometimes I think out loud."

Keller was saved from answering by the announcement that they were docking alongside Bridger's vessel. "Have you spent any amount of time underwater?" he asked Dr. Smith, who cringed as the launch shuddered into place.

"Oh, I've been under now and then," Dr. Smith allowed as the pressure equalized.

"Well, _seaQuest_ is a sight, I can assure you," Keller said. "You won't have seen anything like her."

The submersible vessel in question had been emptied of her crew just prior to their arrival, with no proper explanation why. But that didn't concern Keller—he knew, after all, why he was there. But the reason felt flimsy to him, and he was hoping Nathan Bridger would be able to tell him something more, because Dr. Smith had certainly managed to deftly avoid the question every single time Keller had put it to him.

"Nathan," Keller called as he reached the top of the ladder, "good to see you again. But what's all this really about?"

Bridger chuckled. "I'm going to have to explain things all at once. Besides, haven't you learned patience on those long trips of yours?" Keller laughed and shook his head, but knew Bridger well enough to know that he hadn't finished. Sure enough, Bridger added, "Is the Doctor with you?"

"Dr. Smith?" Keller asked as he scrambled onto the deck. "Sure. He's right behind me."

"And how much has he told you?"

Keller laughed. "Him? Next to nothing. I know more from my briefing than from him."

Bridger nodded, as if he had expected to hear something of that sort. "We're going to have a meeting in the ward room in ten minutes, once you're settled." A pause, then, "There'll be limited attendance."

Keller knew what that meant—there'd only be one more person present than there had been at the last meeting he'd had there with Bridger, back when they'd sent the microwave transmission. Those were the only people who had known about the invitation they'd sent out; the rest, as far as he could knew, had only experienced the flare of excitement and terror when faced with the alien—or been transported to its ship—and had sworn their silence. Until now.

He still wasn't sure what Dr. Smith had managed to say to be allowed to do this.

Dr. Smith had clambered aboard now, and Bridger had moved on to welcome him. "Doctor," he said politely, nodding.

"Captain," Dr. Smith acknowledged, sounding rather distracted. He was looking around, like he was expecting to see something, or hear something, that he might otherwise miss.

Keller grinned. The man looked just like a kid. "I'm sure you'll get the grand tour soon."

"What?" Dr. Smith asked, his eyes finding Keller's face again. "Oh. Right. Yes. Tour. That'll be helpful. I think. Well, I hope. Might narrow it down a bit."

Keller wasn't sure what to say to that, and he was saved from the trouble when Crocker began briefing Dr. Smith about what to expect in his time on _seaQuest_. But their welcome this time wasn't what Keller had expected. It wasn't routine. It didn't follow all the regulations. And he, for one, knew Nathan Bridger well enough to know when he wasn't telling everything he knew.

But despite the time he spent trying to pry out Bridger's secrets, he didn't get anything until the meeting. Bridger sat at the table head, opposite Ford, with Dr. Smith on his left and Keller on his right. The rest—Crocker, Krieg, Hitchcock, Westphalen, Lucas, Shan, Ortiz, and O'Neill—took their places from there. Bridger began the meeting much as he had the last one, telling them how it was unofficial and would be kept off the record and how not a word of it was to leave this room, and if anyone was uncomfortable with it, they could leave. No one did, of course. No one had last time, either. But it was curious that the UEO wouldn't be finding out about this meeting—and since Keller could see no reason for it, he had to sit back and wait to find out why.

Bridger turned the meeting over to Dr. Smith. He stood, with the practiced air of one who was used to being listened to—probably from all those papers he would've had to write and defend to get a list of qualifications that long—and pushed his chair back into the table, resting his hands on its back. "There's one thing," he began, "that I want to make very clear, right now. I am here because there is something wrong, and I intend to fix it. Generally, that doesn't involve long, convoluted meetings like this, because I seem to find that when I attend those, other things go wrong, things that detract from the real issue. So, I don't intend to stick around for all of it. Sorry. But, while you're all here, I want to know if any of you have so much as heard of anything that happened recently that's just a little bit out of the ordinary." He paused, then added, "Or quite out of the ordinary. That's sometimes the case, too."

"What I find unusual," Ford finally said, "is how you got on our ship, disappeared, and turned up in a launch from a ship that would have had to leave before we saw you the first time."

Keller saw Dr. Smith's frown, but what intrigued him more was what Ford was implying. Most of the people around the table were part of the bridge crew, but even those who weren't—such as Lucas—didn't seem entirely surprised by the question, and many looked as if they'd been wondering the same thing. None of them looked shocked by the implications in the question—implications which, if he spent any amount of time examining them, seemed more than a bit contradictory.

"Before we get into _that_," Dr. Smith said carefully, "would you mind seeing if you can recall anything _else_ that's a bit odd?"

"Odd in what way?" Ortiz asked.

"In any way," Dr. Smith replied. His frown returned though, and after a few seconds, he added, "Well, maybe not _any_ way. It's _likely_ to have to do with something that you lot uncovered recently. A science-y thing, then. An odd science-y thing."

"Then it's your territory, Dr. Westphalen," Ford said, folding his arms.

"We haven't been conducting any studies that are particularly unusual," Dr. Westphalen protested. "We're studying the life around the hydrothermal vents, re-enacting previous experiments to see if we can replicate our findings. It's nothing we haven't done before."

Dr. Smith was shaking his head. "No, that won't be it. Whatever it is, it's not biological."

"Whatever _what_ is?" Shan queried, raising his eyebrows.

"Whatever it is that's causing that force I can feel," Dr. Smith answered shortly. "Pressure or repulsion or whatever it is. It's not biological. Well, it doesn't feel biological. Mineral, maybe. Or synthetic. I'm not sure. It's constant, so I'm more inclined to say synthetic, but I'm hesitant to rule anything out when I don't really know anything."

"Mineral, you say?" Bridger repeated. He glanced at Dr. Westphalen, then back at Dr. Smith. "Such as the material from a meteorite?" Dr. Westphalen looked surprised, as if she'd only just remembered something, and Dr. Smith looked interested.

"Quite possibly," he agreed. "And this would be where, exactly?"

"My quarters," Dr. Westphalen answered, getting to her feet. "Shall I fetch it for you?"

Dr. Smith hesitated, then shook his head. "No. Best if we both go now. Just in case."

The minute they were gone, Ford spoke up again. "Who is he, Captain? Why are you allowing this? We should—"

"Who he is, Commander Ford," Bridger interrupted, "is a bit more complicated than it sounds. You know as well as anyone that things are rarely simply what they appear to be on the surface." Ford looked unhappy at the rebuke, but accepted it, clearly remembering his first encounter with Mika—something that had seemed impossible, seeing as it had occurred when he'd been down somewhere about thirty-four thousand feet and she'd swum by him, unassisted and perfectly at home in the water. "You are the only ones on this ship," Bridger continued, "who are going to be trusted with this information. I expect you to act accordingly. The Doctor has decided to trust us, and I don't want to break that trust."

"But, beggin' your pardon, Cap'n," Crocker protested, albeit a bit hesitantly, "he's proven himself to be a danger to everyone on board this ship if he managed to get aboard without anyone knowing. Shouldn't we be addressing that?"

"Crocker's right, sir," Hitchcock agreed. "We may not have been able to find any system malfunctions, but it's not simply a matter of us not looking hard enough. We stripped the search down. It's not that we missed something; it's that we never recorded when the Doctor turned up in the first place."

"Nathan, if I may," Keller started. Bridger nodded, and Keller continued, "Am I correct in assuming that, when I arrived in the launch with Dr. Smith, it was not the first time he had been on board _seaQuest_?" He needed to be sure. He couldn't just be guessing. The implications alone….

"That's right, Scott," Bridger replied. "We found him on board earlier today."

"Earlier today?" Keller repeated. "But that's impossible; I've been with him all day. The UEO had us filling out forms for most of the morning, before they took us out to be dropped off here."

The revelation was greeted with a few stunned moments of silence. Krieg was the one to break it, saying, "Why would the UEO have one of their own higher-ups filling out forms twice? There must be some mistake. When I talked to the Doctor, I checked his identification. And he told me his assignment was too important for everyone to know about, but he still had enough connections to be able to get on and, clearly, off _seaQuest_ without our knowing. I'm sure his turning up again, properly, in such a short time, is all part of his cover story. There isn't any question of security, then. He is here on official business."

"Uh, Ben," Lucas said, looking like he was trying not to laugh, "I think the Doctor lied to you. Believe me, he's not part of the UEO." Lucas glanced at Bridger. He nodded his assent to the unspoken request, and Lucas continued, "I did some digging, and the Doctor confirmed what I found. When we found that alien ship—well, let's just say we weren't the first ones to discover something like that and try to cover it up. People have been doing it for years. The human race has probably had first contact more times than we can count."

"So Dr. Smith's purpose here _is_ just to see if he can match the ship we found with any other that's been uncovered?" Keller asked. "Then what was he talking about?"

Bridger shook his head. "It's more than that. The Doctor isn't just a researcher of alien life and artefacts. He's…." Bridger paused, then resumed, saying, "I have no reason to doubt the Doctor's claims that he is, in fact, an alien himself. He says he possesses the ability of time travel, something I cannot dispute, given the statements of Commander Keller and UEO command." He gave a wry smile. "I was informed this morning that the Doctor had been badgering them for weeks for permission to come aboard, and he managed to pull enough strings to make that happen today."

O'Neill was the first one to find his voice this time. "But he's British," he protested, weakly. "And he doesn't look like an alien. He looks as human as any of us."

"My observations exactly, Lieutenant, but Dr. Westphalen examined him, and if she were here, I am certain that she would be able to assure you otherwise."

The conversation continued on, but Keller was too busy thinking to pay it much mind. This Dr. Smith—or the Doctor, as everyone else was calling him—was actually an alien. A time travelling alien. Recalling the Doctor's earlier comments, Keller felt a brief thrill of excitement. 2058, he'd said, they would establish a base on Mars. Perhaps that was fact and not just wishful thinking.

Of course, if that were true, then likely whatever had happened in 2059 to make it a memorable year as well would occur. And, from the Doctor's expression, Keller wasn't sure he wanted to know what was going to happen. He was certain that it wasn't good.

But if he _was_ an alien, then he'd encountered two different alien species within a couple months. But the Doctor had seemed more than a bit informed about Earth and the ways of her people—how long had he been there? What was his purpose? Was he studying them? Did he really look like that, or was it just some sort of high-tech camouflage device? What was his native language, and how did he manage to learn English so perfectly? Where was his home planet, and what did it look like? How was his society set up?

Keller's head was buzzing with questions and he was eager for answers. But even as he longed to corner the Doctor and ask him everything that came to mind, he realized that if the Doctor was here intentionally, there was not likely to be a good reason for it. Whatever he was looking for, and whatever was causing the force he could feel, was clearly a cause for concern. And if it wasn't something they, as simple humans, could detect, then it wasn't something they could fix.

This Doctor, whoever he was, had come to help them.

And, perhaps in anticipation of this pressure or whatever it was being dangerous, he had convinced the UEO to empty the ship of much of her crew.

Perhaps that was so there would be fewer casualties.

If the Doctor had seen the future—or rather, been to the future, or perhaps even come from it—then it was quite possible that he knew the fate of _seaQuest_ and everyone on board.

Maybe he'd come to change it. Or maybe he'd come to make sure it happened as it should happen. Or maybe he hadn't come to do either, but to just try to influence it, changing little things and not changing the entire outcome.

One thing was for certain: he wasn't here by accident.

Keller sincerely hoped that whatever Dr. Westphalen had was the thing the Doctor had been looking for, and that the Doctor could deal with it accordingly, without any trouble. But somehow, he doubted that would be the case. Things were never so blessedly simple. Not in his experience.

* * *

A/N: Just a quick yet sincere thank you for the reviews; it always brings a smile to my face.


	5. Chapter 5

The Doctor eyed the fragment Dr. Westphalen held out to him critically. It didn't _look_ suspicious. But he knew enough not to judge solely on looks—especially when his instincts were telling him that something was quite wrong. "That's the outside face, right?" he asked. Dr. Westphalen nodded. "Turn it over," he requested.

"It looks the same," she said, sounding apologetic, as if she should have anticipated that request. Perhaps she ought to have, yes. But her reason for not doing it immediately, before he'd had a chance to request it—that it all looked the same—was wrong.

The piece she'd managed to find had split off surprisingly cleanly. That wasn't completely out of the ordinary, of course. The fact that the inner mineral—or at least the main one—split into layers as easily as, oh, shale, wasn't particularly surprising, either. What concerned him was what he thought that inner mineral might be.

He had his spectacles out of his pocket and balanced on his nose before Dr. Westphalen could say another word. Leaning in, he scrutinized the stone, wondering if he ought to dig in his pockets for his magnifying glass. He hadn't left that in his coat, had he? He hoped not. It had been in his suit pocket the last time he'd needed, after all, so he shouldn't have put it in his coat. Donna _had_ given it back, hadn't she? He couldn't remember now. He hoped so. Had he used it since the 1920s?

"Did you analyze this?" the Doctor asked, glancing up at Dr. Westphalen.

"Yes," she answered. "The outer constituents indicated that it was a pallisate meteorite, but it's clearly not."

"Unless it's all so small that you can't see anything unusual," the Doctor muttered, peering at the fragment again. "And you brought this back why, exactly?"

"I was curious," she admitted.

Something in her tone made the Doctor straighten up. "Curious?" he repeated.

"I've always harboured a bit of an interest for the stars," she allowed, sounding rather sheepish.

"And you ended up spending your time underwater, as far away from them as you can be?" the Doctor asked, incredulous.

Dr. Westphalen laughed. "I went where my work took me," she replied. After a moment, she shrugged, adding, "My curiosity can be sated by studying the works of others. Commander Keller's find of fossils on Mars, for instance."

The Doctor frowned. "Yes. But I would've thought…." He trailed off. There was nothing wrong on the surface, but something just didn't sit right with him. He wished he'd taken the time to study the files of those aboard the _seaQuest_ before he'd begun pestering the UEO to let him come on board. He wouldn't normally have done it that way, but he'd needed to go about it carefully. He _could_ have tried to have the ship stripped down to a skeleton crew, but reducing her crew members as he had felt sufficient enough. The only people who _really_ knew what was going on were those Bridger had gathered for the meeting. A tad too many for his tastes, given what had happened after—

Still. They'd be safe enough—even from him. And the others on board wouldn't think him anything but a scientist. He'd play his part, asking questions, just to be thorough, and once he'd sorted this out, he'd be on his way. The UEO might not be too happy when they didn't hear any more about a report, but he _really_ didn't like paperwork, and he wasn't about to do more than he had to. The forms he'd filled out this morning had been tedious enough. To have to actually _write_ something…. He'd rather take on a Sontaran in single combat, to be perfectly honest.

But this was all rather funny. The fragment was, as far as he could tell, giving off that steady pulse that warned him away. Trouble was, he couldn't figure out why. It had only come here by some strange twist of fortune, after all. It wasn't intended that the fragment specifically come here. Logically, he should be getting off the _seaQuest_ as quickly as he could and heading to the site in Greenland where they'd found the meteorite in the first place. But he'd known enough, when he'd been in the TARDIS again, to run a scan for a similar force, and he hadn't been able to find a match. Whatever it was was unique.

That meant that something had needed to be activated in the fragment Dr. Westphalen had. That, or by some _extreme_ bit of luck, the material that was giving off the signal was an anomaly, concentrated only in one small chuck of the meteorite as a whole, and Dr. Westphalen had just so happened to remove it.

Unlikely.

Unless something had encouraged her to take the part she had.

But that still left him without knowing why or what.

Curiosity, she said, had made her take it, had probably sent her there to go _look_ for it, without even knowing what she was looking for. What he needed to find out was whether that curiosity was innocent or not, but he wasn't sure if Dr. Westphalen herself would know. "They frown on souvenir-seekers, you know," the Doctor reminded her, still thinking about how she'd taken the fragment.

"It's not like I cleft it off the main specimen," Dr. Westphalen answered defensively, although the Doctor knew as well as she did that what she'd done wasn't, entirely, legal, especially in this day and age. "It's probably one of many. I found it a few hundred yards from the main site, in one of the new sections they'd just begun to excavate."

"You did?" the Doctor asked, interested. "When everyone else had been coming into the area looking for a similar thing, that managed to remain hidden until you came along?"

A small smile, accompanied by a tiny shake of the head. "Just lucky, I suppose."

This wasn't right. It just wasn't. He wasn't entirely sure _why_—it looked right, after all. Perfectly legitimate. But something was practically screaming at him that there was something wrong, and it wasn't just that pressure he could feel, not anymore.

How many times, in his experience, had something extraordinary been discovered in unlikely circumstances by pure coincidence alone? Not many. There always seemed to be something else, hiding just out of sight, waiting its turn and biding its time until it could best accomplish its purpose. A purpose that, if it followed the usual trend, he doubted he'd like.

He may not have studied Dr. Westphalen's file, but he did have an awfully good memory for history and the people who made it, if he did say so himself, and something like this would surely have caught his eye.

He'd been wrong before, of course. He could be wrong now. It wasn't impossible. But he doubted he was. Well, he usually doubted he was wrong, even if he _was_ wrong. He didn't act on assumptions or conclusions he knew were wrong. But, still. What if Dr. Westphalen's interest wasn't just casual? What if something had _planned_ this all? What if it, whatever it was, had _given_ her the knowledge, _planted_ that interest, _encouraged_ it to grow, all to set this up for him? Something could have drawn her to the meteorite and help her find that fragment that she was holding now. And something could very well have known what it was, and how _he'd_ react when he found it.

He could have walked right into a trap.

But, no. He didn't think so. Things didn't add up like they would if that were the case. It was plausible enough as it was, and, for all he knew, it was _intended_ for him to react as if he were caught in a trap. If he was distracted, it would buy whatever it was time to do whatever it needed to do. More likely, this was just something he'd missed. He tended to do that. Those little things. They were more important than he thought. Well, they usually were. And he knew that. So he _shouldn't_ miss them. But he still did.

If he'd been travelling with someone, or a couple of people, or even three or more, they would have been able to tell him what was what. They'd know. It didn't seem to matter where they were from as long as it wasn't Gallifrey—though that's not to say that Romana hadn't pointed him in the right direction once or twice herself. But Nyssa, for instance, had recognized things he'd missed. Granted, that could've been because she had tended to spend so much time with his human companions. She knew loads, too—far more than Dr. Westphalen about biochemistry, that's for certain. But she hadn't let knowledge blind her, like he sometimes did.

Knowledge was powerful.

In the wrong hands, it could be disastrous.

He could confiscate that fragment right here, right now, and demand that the UEO send a launch for him immediately. It wouldn't be long before things returned to normal here. They wouldn't know, exactly, what had happened, or nearly happened, or what all the fuss was about, and they'd be perfectly safe.

He hardly wanted to act without looking, without trying to see exactly how things had gotten to where they were supposed to go. Never mind that there were often multiple paths to the same end; that didn't eliminate the fact that there were a few that took the timeline in quite the opposite direction of where it ought to be headed. Usually he knew what those were, even without looking. He could sense them, whether he wanted to or not. But now he couldn't.

It might be a consequence of his actions. It was recent enough that the rapid misalignment and sharp reinstatement of the timeline had clouded things, temporarily. Like he was ill and his senses were dulled. That's all it felt like.

And it wasn't any less than he deserved, after what he'd tried to do. How could he have forgotten Mr. Copper's words so quickly? It hadn't been that long before. A few years, give or take. And he'd agreed with them wholeheartedly. He still did. But in his blind arrogance, he'd gone and put that aside, ignored all of it, in an attempt to do something he shouldn't, under any circumstances, have attempted to do.

He'd chosen—well, he'd _tried_ to choose—who lived and who died, back on Mars. They were all supposed to die, and he knew that. He should have just left. He'd been going back to the TARDIS. He should have just continued and left the red planet behind. But he'd seen so much death, he couldn't bear it. Three lives. Three people. Well, three people and a robot. Was that too much to ask? He'd wanted to save all of them, even though they were all supposed to die. He'd chosen. He'd gone against everything he ought to have and he'd chosen life over death when there wasn't really any choice to be had at all.

He was a monster.

If Adelaide Brooke hadn't seen sense where he couldn't, he would've—

This life was one of his shorter ones, and the end was coming soon. Perhaps that was a good thing. He'd seen too much death in this life. If he had a fresh start, he might get a chance to see more life than death. Maybe he'd been wrong not to take on another companion after Donna, but he couldn't do it. Not yet. It hurt too much. And now, especially, now that he _knew_ he was going to die, and soon, but just not when, well—how could he justify endangering someone like that?

He was running from something he couldn't run from.

If he'd had a companion or two, though, he would've had sense talked into him, and probably a good slap to boot. He always seemed to lecture them on fixed points. If they saw him going back on his word, they'd put their foot down. It didn't matter that they didn't understand all the subtleties. They didn't need to. They always trusted him and took him at his word, and they would've noticed when things started to stack up like that, to get to be just a little bit too much. Perhaps they could have prevented what he'd tried to do.

But it was too late now, either way.

He didn't want to die, but perhaps, once he regenerated, he'd be able to think with a clear head. He'd be a different person, after all. Different thoughts, different feelings, different personality.

Until he started reflecting on his past lives.

But he'd be able to handle it differently. He always did, it seemed. Never the same twice. Not entirely. And him, what would _he_ be? Just memories. Another voice in the back of his head. Another conscience that he silenced when he didn't want to listen.

But he shouldn't be thinking about that, not now. He had other things to think about. This might not be a trap set to catch him, but that didn't mean that there was nothing to worry about, that nothing was wrong. Something was, most certainly, wrong. Perhaps Dr. Westphalen's interest was genuine, her discovery of the fragment purely coincidental after all. He didn't have any evidence otherwise. And he knew that if he spent too much time looking for an answer that wasn't there, he'd put people in danger.

Best to deal with the matter at hand, then, as it unfolded.

No need to take the meteorite fragment and run, potentially changing something that he shouldn't. Best to let it play out as it was. The people on board had already experienced the extraordinary, and they knew they weren't alone in the universe. Nothing he uncovered would destroy them, not if he was careful.

Still, without the TARDIS, he would have to make do with Dr. Westphalen's initial analysis and his own observations, unless he had time to analyze it himself, using her instruments. "May I?" he asked, holding out his hand and nodding at the meteorite.

"Of course," Dr. Westphalen replied, handing the stone to him.

He closed his eyes when he took it, wanting to see if he could hear it sing, or talk, or whisper. Some things did, and it was better to judge by ears alone when that was the case. But it wasn't, not this time. Perhaps he ought to taste it; that might give him a better idea of its origin.

The Doctor opened his eyes and brought the stone to his face. He sniffed it first. Nothing terribly unusual that he could detect, but that was probably because most things would have been burnt off when it had entered Earth's atmosphere. Carefully, he stuck out his tongue and licked it. It was bitter, and he made a face. But it did tell him something—normal stones didn't taste bitter. Just sort of blah. This was, as he'd anticipated, a bit more than he'd expected.

"What, exactly, did you find in that analysis of yours?" the Doctor asked, still studying the stone intently. It was hard, and tough. It contained a crystalline structure latticed throughout it, but that structure changed from sheets to a strong, interlocking structure—a different mineral.

But, as he scratched at the softer mineral, he realized that it was probably the combination of the two that had created that pressure he'd felt trying to push him away. He didn't know, offhand, what they were—his initial guess at what the inner mineral might be had been ruled out by the bitter taste, since it would've tasted just the slightest bit salty if it had been what he'd been thinking—and he wasn't entirely confident in his ability to name them when he couldn't recognize them. The TARDIS might have had something on record in her databanks, but he'd left her behind when he'd gone back to convince the UEO to order most of Bridger's crew off his ship.

He regretted that, a bit. He never did like being separated from his ship. But he'd worked without her before, many times, and it wasn't as if he couldn't do it now. He'd just have to rely more on his memory. That would be simple; he _always_ had to rely on his memory. He knew an awful lot of things, and they tended to come in terribly handy. He was bound to have run into something in all his years that would help him now.

And it wasn't as if he had a horrendous memory. He remembered most things, and he was good with details. Usually. Not always, but usually. That was not to say that he had never remembered a name incorrectly, but it wasn't the sort of thing he did every day. Well, not usually. He at least remembered important things, like the customs of the Guara or the language of the Xrandi or the best place to buy those little cupcakes with the ball bearings on top. He didn't keep up on other things as much as he used to, like the cricket statistics, but that was more because he had the next, oh, three hundred years or so still memorized than because he wasn't _quite_ as much of a fanatic as he'd once been.

Maybe he was getting old.

He hoped not.

Especially since he still told people he'd only seen just over nine centuries.

Ah, well. If they had enough trouble believing that, he wasn't even going to _bother_ trying to figure out his _real_ age.

He was better off keeping that a mystery, anyway, like his name. And his age was an easy lie now, one that he sometimes believed himself—even if he wasn't the greatest liar in this regeneration, though he was good enough, usually, to get what he needed. He just had to remember not to push it too far. And he couldn't forget partway through the charade. That never helped. But the little white lies, the fibs he told so fluently—those were the ones that were believed, usually without question. But sometimes he'd try to tell one, just to avoid thinking about the truth, and one observant companion or another would call him on it.

Look at Martha, when he'd tried to avoid telling her about Gallifrey.

But she'd been stubborn.

Of course, most of the rest of them had been the same.

Oh, it hurt. All of it. Even the old pains, gnawing at his heavy hearts. So many faces, so many voices, so many brave, brave people he'd known. Some he'd left. Some had left him. And some had died, and some of those had been because of him, and some of those had been in spite of him, and some of those had been for him, and some…. Some had died to save the Earth, or the timeline, or the universe.

They always seemed to sacrifice themselves, those ones. And they always knew the cost, it seemed. But they also knew what they were buying. And it wouldn't be in vain, not if it was in his power to make it so. He couldn't say that things would have been just fine if they hadn't done what they had. They wouldn't have been. Well, it was highly unlikely. Someone else would have had to step up to the plate. And even when he tried, he wasn't always able to be the one to do that.

It was hard to shut out the taunting voices in his head that reminded him of all the death and destruction he'd caused. He remembered what Davros had said to him, the last time they'd had the misfortune to meet. He, the Doctor, the one who wanted to save people, had been named the Destroyer of Worlds. The one who kept running because he didn't dare to look behind him, because he couldn't, not after what he'd done. And he hurt everyone he touched. Well, maybe not everyone, but nearly everyone. He wanted to help, and he tried to, he really did, but someone always got hurt. Maybe not immediately, but eventually, and it was always his fault.

The Doctor took a shuddering breath. Focus. He had to focus. The stone fragment, the source of the strange force he'd felt the moment he stepped on board. He'd asked a question, hadn't he? Had Dr. Westphalen answered him already? He rather hoped not. He didn't like admitting that he hadn't been paying attention. He glanced up to read her expression and see whether or not she was waiting for him to say something.

She wasn't there.

Odd.

"Dr. Westphalen?" the Doctor called carefully. "Kristin?"

He was getting a bad feeling.

Keeping hold of the rock, he stuck his head out into the corridor and repeated the call. Still no response.

The bad feeling grew worse.

"Oh, this isn't good," the Doctor muttered. Louder, he called, again, "Dr. Kristin Westphalen, can you hear me?"

Silence.

Oh, oh, oh, this could be bad. This could be very, _very_ bad. Perhaps it was a trap after all, like the one the Trickster had put him in with Sarah Jane's friends so they couldn't help her. Poor Sarah. She hadn't deserved that, to find love and have it taken away like that. At least that poor man—what was his name? He couldn't remember. Then again, it's not like he ever had a good, long conversation with him. So forgetting was excusable, wasn't it?—had been brave enough to make the right choice, and to support Sarah in hers. But all that had meant was more death.

Peter. His name had been Peter.

The Doctor shook his head, trying to clear it. Pocketing the fragment, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver, adjusted the settings, and turned it on, waving it around and listening. No, not the same sort of trap, if it was a trap at all. Time was still moving on. He changed the settings and tried again—still negative. He hadn't been shifted into another dimension, or through a crack, or into a parallel world, or into another sort of reality.

Well, that ruled out the major things.

But it still didn't explain what had happened.

Or why it was so quiet.

Well, there was only one way to find out. Tucking his sonic screwdriver away, along with that visitor's badge they'd given him in case he went and lost it, the Doctor set off down the corridor to see what he could find.

* * *

A/N: I'm not fudging the timelines _too_ much, regarding the reference to the Sarah Jane Adventures episode _The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith_, if you consider that, with the Doctor, he could either have been acting through it, pretending to be all cheerful like his old self and pouring all his energy into trying to help his past companion so he wouldn't have to think about the events of Mars, or the fact that he could very easily have experienced that little adventure prior to _The Waters of Mars_ rather than after it.

Also, Cylon One was kind enough to point out a few clarity issues, so I've fixed most of those up, and I'd like to ask that if I ever do something silly (like running two words together as I did in chapter one, which means I must've hit the backspace key when I was putting in the lines, because my computer copy was fine) that someone tells me so that I can fix it! Of course, I'm quite happy to know what you think about anything else, too, so many thanks to those who take the time to review. If anyone wants to take a guess as to what happened, I promise to actually tell you if you're right (as opposed to misleading you by pointing out a lot of alternatives, as I've done with past stories….)


	6. Chapter 6

For her part, Dr. Kristin Westphalen didn't have any better idea of what had happened than the Doctor did. She just knew that one moment he was there, and scarcely ten seconds—if that, seeing as it could have been as little as two; she just knew it hadn't been instantaneous—after she had handed him the meteorite fragment, he'd vanished. She wasn't sure, exactly, how much she could put down to the fact that she knew he was an alien. He hadn't mentioned being able to do something like that. And if he could, wouldn't he have given her some warning? He'd seemed decent enough, earlier.

She waited for perhaps five minutes before she began wondering if he'd come back, and then she waited ten more. The meeting was probably over by now. She wondered what the crew had thought. They wouldn't all take it in stride, like Krieg. And she worried especially about Crocker and O'Neill, who had had enough of a time accepting alien life last time they'd been faced with it.

She went by the ward room just to be sure, but it was predictably empty. She continued on to the bridge, but when she saw Captain Bridger in conversation with Commander Keller, she didn't want to disturb them. The Doctor could turn up at any moment, after all. He seemed like just the sort of person who would take great joy in bounding through the doors to the bridge, grinning like a loon, not even noticing their wonder and worry.

She was a bit relieved when she spotted Lucas alone. Walking over to him, she asked in a low voice, "How much of the Doctor's file did you manage to read?"

Lucas thought for a moment. "Well, I didn't manage to get into all of it," he confessed, "but most of that was related to his assignments. I probably saw most of the important stuff. Why?"

"What did it say about his…unique abilities?" she asked carefully.

"Unique abilities?" Lucas repeated. "Besides being able to travel in time and space, you mean?" She gave him a look, and he relented. "The electronic copy was only partial," he admitted. "Despite what he said, they didn't put everything where it could be accessed on the Internex."

"But was there anything about…." Dr. Westphalen hesitated, unsure of what she should say. "Teleportation, perhaps, or being able to become invisible, or at the very least unnoticed."

"Are you trying to say you lost him?" Lucas asked, looking like he was going to laugh.

Her expression apparently made him control himself. "Please, just answer my question, Lucas."

He shook his head. "From the sounds of it, that describes his ship better than him. His file didn't say a lot. Planet of origin, species, position with UNIT, the dates he was active within the organization, that sort of thing. It's his ship that does the time travelling. His TARDIS, he calls it. And he told us it was dimensionally transcendental. The file doesn't say too much about him—not even what he looks like. But I guess in terms of abilities, he seems to have some psychic abilities, and it did say that he can regenerate, so I guess if he manages to lose a few fingers, he can grow them back. Like a salamander."

Dr. Westphalen raised her eyebrows. "Are you sure about that?"

"What else is it going to mean?" Lucas returned, laughing.

"I'm not sure I know anymore," Dr. Westphalen replied. She paused, then added, reluctantly, "And, yes, I believe that I did lose him. But I'm not sure that it was intentional. All I did was hand him the meteorite fragment and…."

"He disappeared?" It was Lucas's turn to look sceptical. But he took another look at her expression and said, "You're serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Dr. Westphalen asked quietly.

Lucas was saved from having to respond when Keller joined them, having finished his conversation with the captain. He proceeded to ask the two of them questions about the Doctor, and the explanations carried on for nearly five minutes before Keller stopped and asked, "Where is the Doctor, anyway? Off investigating? Did you give him free run of the ship?"

"He's gone," Dr. Westphalen replied. "I haven't any idea where he could be."

"Well, just call him to the bridge," Keller said, as if that were the most obvious solution in the world.

Dr. Westphalen had her doubts about how effective that would be—would the Doctor come even if he did hear them?—but she saw the reasoning in it. But after they'd explained things to the captain and the rest of the bridge crew, and after the call had received no response—not so much as another crew member reporting seeing the Doctor—Dr. Westphalen became convinced that whatever had happened had, most definitely, not been intentional. It had been half an hour since she'd last seen the Doctor.

"Dr. Westphalen," Bridger said at length, "perhaps you'd best go over your initial analysis of the meteorite fragment again and see what you can make of it. Take Lucas with you."

"But, Captain, wouldn't it be better if I stay and try to—"

"Go, Lucas," Bridger repeated, smiling. "You might learn something. And take a look at her quarters while you're at it; maybe you'll see something Dr. Westphalen didn't."

She couldn't argue with that; it was quite possible, after all. Lucas had grown up expecting this sort of thing; she hadn't. And she'd been panicked when she couldn't find him at first and that made it easier to overlook things. She hoped she had. It would all be so much simpler if they could find the answer there.

But she was a scientist, after all. She was trained to observe the smallest changes. She was meticulous and organized. It wasn't like her to miss things.

But perhaps, just this once, she'd be luckier if she had.

_

* * *

SeaQuest_, the Doctor soon discovered, was dead in the water.

He wasn't sure why, and he didn't know if it was intentional or if they'd been hit. He also didn't know where everyone was, because however quiet it was, he had the distinct feeling that he wasn't the only one on board. Which made a lot of sense, seeing as he couldn't think of a reason, at least at the moment, that they would completely abandon _seaQuest_ without the threat of impending danger. Well, at least he thought there wasn't any impending danger threatening them. He didn't know that for certain.

Something had to be wrong. They wouldn't be dead in the water for no reason whatsoever.

He always seemed to find things when they went wrong, never when they went right. Funny, that. He always seemed to be the person who needed to correct the something that had gone wrong. Except when he couldn't.

He tried his sonic screwdriver again, hoping to find out what danger he was actually facing.

Consequently, he had it on the wrong setting to be _really_ useful when he came face to face with someone, clad in black, who was holding a great, big gun.

A great, big gun that just so happened to be pointed at him.

"I don't like guns," the Doctor remarked, eyeing it with distaste.

Keeping his gun trained on the Doctor, the man who had confronted him reached for his headset and adjusted the microphone. The Doctor took his chance, rapidly changing the screwdriver's settings and pointing it at the man's headset, scrambling its frequencies. The man reacted with a barked warning and raised his gun again, so the Doctor dutifully raised his arms, but it was too late now. Well, at least for the moment. It wasn't something that would last, that disruption, but _he_ didn't know that, whoever he was.

"I've got someone," the man said into the headset, "but he's not dressed as crew."

The Doctor knew full well that the man wasn't going to get a response, and he debated pointing that out, but decided it would probably be in his best interest not to bother. Instead, he offered the man a grin. "Right about that," he said cheerily. "Not being crew, I mean. I'm not. So, how about we just forget it all then, eh? Pretend you never saw me?"

"You're coming with me," the man said bluntly, reaching out to grab the Doctor.

The Doctor responded by moving away, and the man cocked his gun. The Doctor raised his eyebrows at that. "Oh, you don't really mean to shoot me," he pointed out, though he still remained out of easy reach. "You've probably orders not to. After all, if you had intended to shoot me, you would've done it when you first saw me, not waited this long. Why would you? No reason for it."

He hadn't expected the man to move so quickly. He'd expected him to move, yes. But he was quicker on his feet than the Doctor had anticipated and, consequently, the Doctor spent the next few seconds groaning on the deck, nursing the sudden pain in his shoulder where the man had hit him with the gun.

He supposed he was lucky. He had been able to react. Not quite as quickly as he might've liked, but the man had been aiming to hit his head with the butt of the gun, and he'd managed to avoid being knocked unconscious. Considering his track record, that wasn't bad. Granted, when people were successful, they usually cheated. Knocked him from behind, for instance, or maybe used one of those high-tech tricks that they still hadn't figured out on Earth. The trouble with those was that he could never remember when they were all invented, by whom and where, or how quickly they spread, and he rarely knew when to anticipate them. Subsequently, they worked more often than they might have, if he'd been expecting them.

The Doctor pretended the blow was worse than it actually was—though that's not to say his shoulder wasn't _sore_—and let his attacker pull him to his feet and drag him down the corridor. It was still awfully quiet, their footsteps aside. But at least now he had an idea of what had happened. _SeaQuest_ had been attacked, taken over when she was vulnerable. That told him one thing: wherever he was, it wasn't the same time as it had been when he'd been with Dr. Westphalen not fifteen minutes before. Trouble was, even if he knew he hadn't been shunted sideways, he still didn't know whether he'd been thrust ahead or behind.

If it was behind, he was in a tad more trouble, because that meant he couldn't run into anyone who had actually been on the ship when he'd turned up the first time.

And with that dratted rock fragment dulling his senses, he couldn't even tell for certain, so he had to assume he'd been sent back anyway, just in case.

He knew better than to assume that he was lucky and that he had nothing to worry about.

Of course, that also meant that he had to get out of the situation he was in now, and quickly, because every second he was exposed on board was another second that he risked being seen and, later, recognized. And he _really_ didn't want to have to untangle things if they got all twisted up like that. It was complicated enough trying to keep the timeline on its intended path as it was, now that he was the only one. He didn't need to have to worry about making sure events arrived at the appropriate places in the timestream after they got shunted off on completely unnecessary detours if he could prevent the deviations in the first place.

He didn't think he could afford to bide his time and wait until they reached a section of the ship he knew already. Well, knew better than this, at any rate. He was still waiting on that tour he'd been promised. The few corridors he'd wandered down on his own, and the couple he'd passed through when he'd been following Dr. Westphalen, hardly did a vessel like this justice. He might as well have walked into, oh, say, the British Museum, seen one exhibit, and walked out again.

He hadn't been there in a while, actually. Perhaps he ought to check in on it again and see how they had been making out since Lady Christina de Souza had stolen the Cup of Athelstan. He didn't imagine that they were too happy about that. Especially since they wouldn't be getting it back, seeing as Christina still had it if she still had the bus, which he rather imagined she did because, distinctive or not, she'd needed it to escape and would continue to need it to evade the authorities. And, well, if they _had_ managed to get it back, it wouldn't have been in good condition, not after he'd taken a hammer to it.

Perhaps he shouldn't bother going there after all. They might not be too happy with him.

Not that he figured they _knew_, just that, well, they might not be…_overly enthusiastic_ if he turned up and something else went sour, as things tended to go when he turned up.

Well, unless that was just his terrible timing. He always seemed to turn up just when things went wrong. The _Titanic_. Pompeii. Bowie Base One.

No. That wasn't the case here. This time, he'd found a lead and followed it. Like he had when he'd ended up on San Helios. Except…this would go better than that. Not that that hadn't gone relatively well. Better than other things had in the past, at least. The death toll had been low.

That there had been a single death in the first place and that he believed that was an improvement on his previous track record was not something he liked admitting, nor something of which he was proud.

The Doctor's mouth twisted. He had to stop focussing on the things he couldn't change and concentrate on the ones he could. This wasn't written yet, not for him, not if he didn't know how it all played out. And it wasn't necessarily written for those aboard _seaQuest_, either, even if he had to treat it as if it were, just in case.

That meant, essentially, that so long as he got loose and wasn't turned over to whoever was in command, he'd be whistling.

He'd try to make a dash for it up ahead, down an adjoining corridor.

Preferably, before that fellow's communicator began working again.

The Doctor stopped abruptly, doubling over with a groan. His captor tried to urge him forward, and he stumbled a few steps ahead obediently before he tripped. He twisted as he did so, and the fellow who'd had a hold on him lost it. The Doctor pushed himself off the deck and was down the corridor and around the corner before the man realized precisely what he was up to.

The Doctor whipped into the nearest room and locked it behind him. He didn't have very long to tweak the perception filter of the TARDIS key, extrapolating and multiplying it so that it transmitted through the key and onto him. Easier now that this was the second time he was doing it with this particular key, but still tricky.

He only just managed it, slipping it over his head, when the door was forced open. He slipped out of the way and stood quietly to the side, doing his very best to remain unnoticed. The man who'd tried to capture him visually swept the room, poking his gun into all the corners and nooks and crannies. The Doctor quietly slipped away, not moving too quickly, not moving too slowly. Pausing outside, he listened, trying to figure out which way the man was likely to go.

"Did he come by your way?" the man asked. Evidently, the communicator was working again.

"Negative," came the reply.

"Work your way back to me, room by room. I saw him turn down here."

The Doctor saw his chance for escape, and he meant to take it. He knew how the rest would play out: they wouldn't find him, and the second man would question the reliability of the first one, and then they'd relay the incident to their leader, who would boundless have some way of checking the first man's story, and when it didn't check out—how could it? There was certainly no record of him being on board—he wouldn't be believed, and the Doctor wouldn't have to worry about running into anyone else so long as he went carefully.

Once he got his bearings, it didn't take him very long to track down the main science lab on board the ship. He worked quickly, setting up everything he thought he'd need and making do with what he had. Well, what they had, which was considerably poorer than what he would have had in the TARDIS, because even if he hadn't been able to replace some of his supplies in years, he'd made them last. And when he couldn't, he'd compensated. Like he was now. And he was getting awfully good at compensating, all things considered. Well, compensating and inventing and improvising and cobbling odds and ends together to get what he needed.

It took him a good ten, fifteen minutes before he was confident that the results of the tests he'd run on the fragment were genuine. It was just that he hadn't seen something like it in, oh, such a long time. But it also explained why he hadn't realized what it was immediately: he was only looking at half of it. Trouble was, half was all that did exist, apparently, because he'd looked hard for similar readings with the TARDIS before he'd gone and begun pestering the UEO to let him on board the official way. That had been troublesome, but necessary. He meant to honour his deals, after all. He'd agreed and, more importantly, he'd promised, so he wasn't going to go back on his word. And he hadn't.

Still, if meteorites were natural, then the thing that Dr. Westphalen had handed him was most definitely not a fragment of a meteorite.

It was manufactured.

It was just made to look like it wasn't manufactured.

It was all that was left of a prototype that had still been in its experimental stages. It hadn't even been given a proper name. Well, if it had been given one, it wasn't well-known, and it wasn't important. Its proper name wouldn't describe it as well as its nickname.

It was, unless he was quite mistaken, the only piece of a temporal intentionality recreator left in existence. Specifically, the part that would take someone back in time.

It had been something the Time Agency had developed—or rather, tried to develop—before they'd perfected their vortex manipulators which, horrendous as they were, were a good deal more reliable than this had ever been. The TIRs—they'd called them TIRs, though why they thought that would be any less troublesome than simply giving them a proper name, the Doctor wasn't sure—worked to send people into the past or into the future, depending on the component they held. Trouble was, they were terribly difficult to control. They worked on intention; whoever held one had to intend to go back—or forward—to a specific time or place, and then they'd find themselves in a scene similar—ideally, the same, but memories tended to be too spotty for that—to the one they'd recreated in their mind. Usually. One wrong detail, and you could end up in an entirely different time. Too little detail, and you were only moved temporally—so long as that movement didn't put you in any danger, in which case you were spatially moved to what the fragment deemed the safest place which was nearest to wherever you happened to be coming from.

Except he hadn't _intended_ to go anywhere.

At all.

Which was why he was still on the _seaQuest_.

The infernal machine had just picked up on his regrets, his thoughts, his pining over the past, so it had sent him back. It hadn't known _when_, exactly. His thoughts had been too vague, too scattered, to give it a precise time. It hadn't gotten much more than the impression of raw pain. But it was recent, at least; within the past year. 2018 or 2019. The _seaQuest_'s first tour had only been thirteen months, and if he was on board her, and sent into her past, then there could be no question about the time frame into which he'd fallen.

Thing was, it would be a bit difficult to get back.

He only had part of the TIR, after all. Without the other part, he couldn't get back to the place he remembered leaving. Well, not easily. He didn't have the proper components to modify it so that he _could_ get back, and that was the trouble. Usually, he could improvise, but there was one specific piece he needed, and he didn't have the materials he needed to make it.

And he _really_ didn't want to just stick around and wait it out. He was far better off trying his hand at something to get back.

Just…perhaps not immediately, because he could hear someone coming now, and if he wanted the perception filter to work properly, he couldn't do anything to draw attention to himself. And that wouldn't be the case if he had to start fiddling now. Someone would be bound to notice something. And then he'd have to explain, and he really didn't fancy that.

Not bothering to tidy up his experimenting—he might get around to it later, just so that he could be confident that no one would know what he was really up to—the Doctor went to stand quietly on the other side of the doorway, waiting. He intended to keep out of trouble, but he needed to think, and walking sometimes helped. He planned to give it a try, at any rate, and he could pace the corridors of the _seaQuest_ in peace if he was careful. But if someone else was coming to the science lab—well, he'd been calling it that, and treating it as such, but it clearly doubled as the med bay, what with the hyperbaric chamber it held—he didn't plan on sticking around.

As Commander Ford hauled an unconscious—and rather wet—man into the hyperbaric chamber, the Doctor slipped out into the corridor, entirely ignored and unnoticed and immediately forgotten.

* * *

Lucas couldn't find anything out of place in Dr. Westphalen's quarters, either. He was, however, having a bit more luck looking over the analysis of the fragment with her. It wasn't that he saw anything different; it was that it occurred to him to ask how likely it was that the unknown properties of the fragment were not, in fact, natural, as Dr. Westphalen had assumed.

Now, she was running a few more tests, and he was trying to design a computer program that would take her analyses and use them to recreate the formation of the fragment. It may not tell them much in the end, but it would be something, and anything would be better than nothing, seeing as the fragment was still missing, and the Doctor with it.

Keller had joined them earlier, plaguing them with questions—probably the same questions he'd asked Captain Bridger—but they couldn't answer most of the things he'd asked. He'd finally been content to go off and see if he could find any references to the Kasterborous constellation the Doctor had mentioned, though, and they hadn't seen hide or hair of him since.

It was while he was running a general scan in the background that Lucas realized something odd had turned up. A few months ago, someone had hacked into _his_ computer to search for information—though what information it was, exactly, he couldn't tell, because they'd wiped their tracks. When he followed the trail he could uncover, it led him around a merry little loop, meaning that his computer had been broken into right here on board rather than from somewhere else, like NODE 3. But if someone on board had wanted something done, and they couldn't do it themselves, they would have had him do it. Bridger had, after all, asked him to do something illegal once or twice—in extenuating circumstances only, of course.

He checked the date, cross-referencing it with the ship's log. It was the day they'd staged Bridger's experiment regarding the hull siphons keeping undersea vessels from sinking—the day they'd been attacked by pirates, commandoes, extreme environmental activists, terrorists, whatever you wanted to call them. So perhaps it wasn't anything after all. He hadn't been at his computer the entire time. Of course, they had shot it out afterwards, but the damage hadn't been as bad as he'd anticipated. They hadn't destroyed anything major—which was surprising, considering their method and intent. By some stroke of luck, they had just managed to miss everything that was really important.

He'd spent some time examining it afterwards; there had been some things in there that really _shouldn't_ have survived the onslaught.

When he'd found out that they had survived, he'd been too thankful to question it.

_Now_, however, he was beginning to wonder.

The Doctor's little display earlier—when he had corrupted his UNIT file—was, Lucas knew, just the tip of the man's knowledge. If he was good with electronics, perhaps it wasn't beyond him to be able to fix something that wasn't so easy for anyone else to fix. And with the amount that they knew about the meteorite fragment and the Doctor himself, it was entirely possible that their contact had triggered some sort of reaction.

Besides, the Doctor had already proven time travel to be possible.

"Uh, Dr. Westphalen," Lucas began, moving to show her what he'd discovered, "I think I may have figured out where the Doctor is."

* * *

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed, and for those of you who didn't quite catch it, the Doctor's back in the events of seaQuest's _Nothing but the Truth_.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: This chapter is set in the _seaQuest_ episode _Nothing but the Truth_, seven episodes before _Such_ _Great_ _Patience_, after which this story is set.

* * *

Colonel Schraeder fixed Commander Hitchcock with a steady gaze. "Who do you imagine my man is talking about, Commander?"

Hitchcock closed her eyes for a moment. There was only one person on board _seaQuest_ who didn't dress as crew, and that was because he wasn't, strictly speaking, part of it. "Lucas Wolenczak," she answered softly, bound by Ford's order to tell the truth but not willing to give more than she had to. "He knows this ship like the back of his hand." She tried to sound confident, and she did, more or less, but she wasn't convinced that her face didn't betray her.

"We've got two men looking for him. We'll find him," Schraeder replied, not sounding the least bit worried.

Hitchcock pressed her lips together, wanting to deny the allegation but knowing that his words would probably come true. With systems check still active, and them monitoring everything on _seaQuest_, they'd notice the minute Lucas tried to contact the surface. And she was sure he would, eventually. She just hoped that they didn't hurt him. She didn't need to ask that, yet. She had to hope that they wouldn't catch him in the first place. But even with two men silenced, Schraeder's man Jackson was on the hunt, and she knew his type. He was experienced, and he often caught his prey.

Schraeder had ordered the men not to kill anyone, but that hadn't stopped them from shooting so far, and she didn't imagine that it would stop them in the future.

Jonathan was still free. She had to remember that. If he wasn't, he'd be right here, beside her. So perhaps he was with Lucas, keeping the boy safe.

She didn't know what had happened to everyone else. Crocker, Krieg, Sheppard—

No. No, she couldn't think about them all right now. She had to pay attention. She had to wait for her chance. She'd get one shot. That would be it. One shot to do as much damage as she could. And then…and then it was out of her hands. The rest was up to Ford, and Krieg, and everyone else, to do what they could do.

She didn't know if they could save _seaQuest_, but if they couldn't, then she hoped that they could stop Colonel Schraeder from doing everything he was trying to do. She'd known, years back, when she'd signed up, that she could very well end up in a situation like this—one which she wouldn't, necessarily, come out of. If the time for that had come now, then she accepted it. She'd still fight, but she'd do whatever she needed to do, no matter what situation she was placed in.

She still hoped it wouldn't come to that, but she'd be ready for it if it did.

But for now, all she could do was watch and wait for her chance, hoping and praying and trusting—and telling the truth.

* * *

When he heard the gunshots, the Doctor tried to resist the urge to run forward. He ended up compromising, running until he thought himself close enough to be noticed if he moved too quickly. He had to make his way towards them slowly and steadily or he'd get caught, and he didn't have an escape this time—not when he couldn't get to the TARDIS. By the time he actually arrived, though, the corridor was empty. Even so, there was no denying that he was in the right place. It was Lucas's room, and it looked like someone had opened fire on it.

It wasn't pretty.

But it also wasn't empty. Krieg and Ford were picking through the wreckage, with Crocker resting on one side, sitting down on Lucas's bed. Once they found what they were looking for, though, they didn't stick around. The Doctor stood quietly out of sight as they left—heading, if he had to guess by their direction and Ford's comments, for the captain's quarters. But he was a bit worried. Crocker didn't look too well. At all. The sling on his arm wasn't the worst of it—and neither was the gash on his head.

He'd worry about that later. Right now, he needed to see what he could repair of Lucas's computer. The first thing he wanted to know was the date. And then, perhaps, who had taken control of _seaQuest_ so he could find out who he was up against and how much or how little he should be doing. It wasn't that they didn't have it under control—or rather, that they wouldn't be able to _get_ it under control, or at least better control. It was just…. Well, he was here, and he could hardly just sit back and do _nothing_. There were ways to help. Little, inconspicuous ways. No one ever had to know.

"It would help," the Doctor said softly, although he couldn't deny that he was trying to convince himself. He'd meant to help last time, too, and look where that had gotten him.

But this was different. It was in flux. And he wasn't _entirely_ sure how it turned out. If he kept his head down, he could still help. He could be useful without being noticeable.

Still. First things first. Getting the mess in front of him up and running wouldn't be easy, but for someone as clever as him, it was far from impossible. Some things were easy to fix, hardly more than repairing broken connections with his sonic screwdriver or bending a bit of metal back into place. Others proved to be a bit more difficult, and he found himself taking more than one circuit from something else and fitting it in elsewhere, moving it from a secondary to a primary function. He had a few useful things in his pockets to help—a bit of copper wire, for instance—but for the most part, he was scavenging from the pile in front of him. When he was finished, the computer would need a good deal more repair to do everything it had done before, but it was sufficient for his needs now. He'd even managed to connect it to the Internex.

Within a few minutes, he confirmed that he was, in fact, in the linear past for the _seaQuest_ crew, and that there was a skeletal crew because they were conducting an experiment regarding the use of hull siphons in refloating a sinking ship. Clever idea, that. Looked like it would work. Although, a little more digging proved that not all of the hull siphons were _working_, so he wasn't entirely sure how that would work. He hoped it was intentional. From what he could tell, the ones that were offline had been manually disconnected. It wasn't an obvious malfunction, at any rate.

The Doctor shook his head. He knew the ship didn't sink now, and unless he was the one to get all those siphons back online, he didn't need to get involved in that. If he _had _been the one to do that, there would have been other unanswered questions that would have sparked something else, and he was fairly sure that there hadn't been further investigations. Besides, he had other things to do. He tapped into a call between Commander Ford and Captain Bridger and learned everything he needed to know about Colonel Schraeder to classify him as an environmental terrorist who wasn't, the Doctor would bet, quite as smart as he thought he was—he sounded like the sort of person whose arrogance would eclipse his judgement from time to time, eventually to his detriment. A few more checks here and there told him what the colonel was intending to do and what, exactly, was still active on _seaQuest_, which in turn told him how to cover his tracks as he went so that he wouldn't be detected. It all went quite well, he thought. Considering the situation, that is.

The situation in which he was stuck.

The situation in which he was stuck with only a partial piece of abandoned technology that, really, shouldn't have ended up where it did in the first place. He'd have to check on that, but he doubted it would be of any real importance. The Time Agency had run enough trials on the things before they'd realized exactly how dangerous and temperamental and downright sensitive the TIRs were—and how completely off-the-mark they could be when the travel intention was not _firmly_ fixed in place. This had probably just ended up here after a test run. Quite possibly an _unintentional_ test run. They pretended they were more careful than the Time Lords, but they really weren't. They were far too sloppy to match the arrogant precision he was used to dealing with. The Time Lords wouldn't have let a trial like this take place in the first place, let alone abandon it when it went wrong without taking care of all the loose ends. Not if it had been started by their own people, at least.

He could sort that later, though, if circumstances permitted. He could always go and give the Time Agency an earful, but that was tiresome. He didn't really like them, and he was quite happy to avoid them. He wouldn't have felt justified in skipping out on giving them a talking to if they had caused any particular _harm_, but since they hadn't, he could just disable the fragment and leave it at that. He still wasn't entirely sure that he couldn't simply fiddle with it until he had it doing the job of its missing—and, since he couldn't track it down in the linear past, present, or future, presumably destroyed—counterpart, but since that would require overriding all the safety measures, he wasn't convinced that that was his best option. He didn't, well, entirely _trust_ the Time Agency, and he didn't have a lot of faith in it.

The Doctor did a final search, pulling up _seaQuest_'s layout, studying both her original design and her modifications, memorizing the lot. He'd need to find his way around her without help. He would have liked the tour Keller had promised him. You could always learn so much more on tours. But bare facts were good, too. Plain and simple. Uncluttered. Easy. Nothing left up to interpretation or guesswork. No mistakes, not for something like this. And he couldn't afford mistakes, not if mistakes meant that he changed something he shouldn't change. He'd know the minute he managed that, though. He couldn't ignore it.

So, hopefully, he'd be able to prevent that.

He was about to shut everything down when something caught his eye. Someone was tinkering with the electrical wiring. _Really_ tinkering. The Doctor frowned, then took a few minutes to pinpoint the position. It was, he figured, a retaliation attempt. Well, considering that most things looked to be an attempt to scramble the launch bay controls, perhaps it was more of a precaution. But if it was, it was poorly cloaked. If they went looking for it, they'd have no trouble finding it.

Well, that was _one_ thing he could do from here without being traced.

Grinning, the Doctor started to construct a cover that would hide the work of the tinkerer, piling on the layers, hiding his own tracks as he did so and making sure that no one else who checked the systems would know that anything was out of the ordinary.

* * *

Chief Crocker knew that things weren't going too well. He kept going in and out, and he was tired, so very, very tired. He probably should have gone to med bay. But he didn't want that. He couldn't go. He had a job to do, and he was doing his best to do it. No matter how hard he found it.

He stared at the mess of wires in his hand, trying to remember what he'd intended to do with them.

A dull, somewhat rhythmic thudding sound penetrated his consciousness. After a few more seconds, he realized what it was: someone crawling towards him, shuffling through the access tunnels.

He didn't have anywhere to hide. They'd catch him at this. Probably have him dragged off somewhere. They couldn't do much more damage than they already had, unless they shot him. He didn't want that, but he wasn't in any position to avoid it, either, if that's what they had in mind. They were closer now, whoever they were. He wouldn't have time to move ahead. He'd be heard if he tried, anyway, and they could move a lot faster than he could.

He tried to focus on what he was doing. If they were going to catch him, fine, but he would do as much as he could before they made it. He'd done a fair bit of damage already. Got the toilets to flush and everything.

He forced his eyes open again. They seemed to close on their own accord. He didn't have as much control over them as he should.

The wires swam in front of his eyes, and he tried to blink the fuzziness away.

"Here," a voice said, and a hand removed the mass in front of him. "Let me help."

He hadn't even realized that the shuffling sound had stopped. He caught a glimpse of brown out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head, his vision swam. He couldn't focus on the man beside him. He knew it was a man, and a Brit at that—he could tell from his voice—but he didn't know anything beyond that, not for certain. It wasn't someone he knew, so the man wasn't crew, but he wasn't dressed like the commandoes, either. They'd all been in black.

And none of them would have been helping him.

And if he hadn't intended to help him, he would've reported finding him, at the very least—even before he started trying to reverse all the damage that had been done.

A high-pitched whine filled the shaft, and Crocker jerked his head back, trying to stay awake. He'd been nodding off again, but the piercing sound had brought him out of it. It echoed in his head, and he couldn't tell if the source had stopped or not.

"Sorry," the man said. "Just…easier for me to do it this way. Won't take as long. But you've done a brilliant job yourself. I have to say, I'm _very_ impressed. And I'm not easily impressed anymore. Well, not always. Depends on what it is. I've seen an awful lot of things, and there's really…."

Crocker could hear what the man was saying, and to a point, he could even understand it, but he was worried now. The blackness was coming again, crawling in from the edges of his vision. He tried to blink it away, but it wouldn't go. It wasn't light in here to begin with, but it just kept getting darker, fuzzy black dots flooding into the middle of his vision, swarming in from the sides. And then he couldn't see anything anymore, even though his eyes were wide open, and the man's babbling was all he could hear, the only thing that made him certain he was still awake.

Unless none of it was real to begin with, and he was still alone in the shaft. The mind played tricks like that. Especially on people in his condition.

He reached out with searching hands, and he found fabric—slightly worn, but surrounding a bony elbow. He heard the man give a squawk of surprise, and there was a moment of silence, no longer interrupted by the previous whining drone that had begun to blend into the background earlier. "You don't…look so good," the man said—slowly, like it was something he already knew, like it was something he had expected, except things were worse than he'd anticipated.

He was still in darkness, looking and not seeing. "I can't…."

"Shsh," the man interrupted. "Stay with me, all right?" He heard some more shuffling, and that strange but now familiar whine. The man loosened the top buttons of his shirt, and long cool fingers felt his forehead—it was hot, it seemed, compared to the hands, but he didn't feel hot. "Hold on a tic," the man said, and the whine returned, changed slightly in pitch. It stopped, and the man continued, "You'll be all right."

The words were true, and his vision started rushing back, but then it was bright, too bright, and he still couldn't see, because everything was _white_, and—

"You'll be fine in a minute or so," the man assured him quietly. "And everything's sorted up here. You can make your way back. Job's done." A pause. "Just…take it easy. I can't do everything I'd like to now, and you need medical attention. Go slowly, but keep going. Things will turn out just fine; don't you worry."

His vision was coming back now, the brightness fading to a bearable level, and he could open his eyes fully again. But it didn't quite come back quickly enough; the man had been moving away, and all Crocker caught before the man rounded a bend in the tunnel was another flash of brown. He turned his attention back to his work, and realized that the stranger, whoever he was, had been right; launch bay was good and scrambled—just as Ford had wanted.

He wasn't sure who it had been, or how he'd gotten on board, or why he'd helped, or even what, exactly, had happened. He was grateful, though. He hadn't been dragged back to the galley supply closet and locked up again, at least.

It was still a struggle to keep conscious, to keep the blackness at bay. He couldn't always manage it as he made his way back, but he tried. Slow and steady. He'd make it eventually. But it didn't matter how long it took him now; his job was done. Now, it was just up to Ford and Krieg.

* * *

The Doctor crawled out of the bowels of the ship, grinning from ear to ear. Helping Crocker with the electronics had given him an idea. Well, not an _idea_, per se, but a reminder of something he had tried before. He wasn't sure if it would work—the circumstances were different—but he was quite willing to try.

After all, he didn't have anything to lose.

What he needed to do was strengthen the link to the TARDIS through his key and call his ship back to him. Some things, like getting a battery for extra power, would be relatively simple. Other things, like establishing the link in the first place, would be a bit trickier.

Particularly because he couldn't use his key as a perception filter while he was using it to pull the TARDIS to him, so while he was attempting that, he'd be vulnerable.

The easy solution would just to pick a quiet room out of sight, tucked away in a seldom used corner. Maybe another storeroom, somewhere into which they wouldn't bother poking their noses. He'd just need to get all his things together and hole up in there until he managed to get the TARDIS, and then he'd be away before anyone was the wiser.

Except that wouldn't be any fun at all.

Still, either way, he'd have to get his supplies together. He didn't need a lot, really. He swiped a battery from Lucas's room and a towel from the moon pool, but he had everything else in his pockets. And he did still set up his base in a storage room, but that was only because he'd thought it best to get as close to the TARDIS as possible, and since he was both spatially and temporally separated from her, it was best to try to call her to a place she'd been before—or would be, at some point in the future.

Once he was organized, he took the key off his neck and took out his sonic screwdriver. It took him a while—longer than he'd care to admit—to get the right combination of settings and power that told him what he was trying to do was possible and, in fact, had a good chance of working. And then he spent a good chunk of time manipulating the link, trying to account for different variables, tweaking something here and another thing there. He was relieved when the key started to burn gold. A few more adjustments, and then he was rewarded with the distant sound of his ship struggling into existence. It would take a while, but it would work as long as the connection wasn't broken.

And, if he was quick and quiet, he could see how things were going elsewhere on _seaQuest_.

The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets and nipped out into the corridor. He could hear water running. No, not running, _rushing_. In. They were flooding the ship, then. As they'd planned, before they'd been overtaken. Except that, with the hull siphons offline, she would actually sink.

He sincerely hoped this was part of a plan. He wasn't, necessarily, the biggest fan of plans, since all too often they went sour, but right now, he hoped things were going exactly according to plan.

But, just in case, he started off at a run toward the Mag-lev sea valve they'd opened, stopping to reconnect a few hull siphons on the way. Just in case.

He was practically spinning down the steps between decks when he was met with a wall of water. Rising water.

"Oh, she's been sinking a while, hasn't she?" the Doctor said, looking down. He tested the water with one foot, and it, predictably, soaked right through his trainer. And it was cold. _Really_ cold. And…he could hear people coming down the stairs behind him. _Brilliant_. They'd see him if he bolted now.

Oh, well. It wasn't like he hadn't been in worse. Or been colder. Six minutes in space, he was quite certain, had been worse than this would be.

He was still hesitating when he saw someone struggling to swim towards the stairs. The man's progress was slow, his movements jerky. He was having trouble keeping his head above the water. The Doctor plunged in to help him, and a few strong strokes brought him within reach. He helped him to the stairs, saw the man climb shakily out, and then dove down as quickly as he could, sinking, trying to get out of sight. He hadn't gotten a good look at the man, and he rather hoped that _he_ hadn't gotten a good look at _him_. He'd been dressed in black, but that didn't tell him much. Ford and Krieg had donned black, too, and while he knew it hadn't been Ford, he wasn't sure that it hadn't been Krieg. But it could just as easily have been one of the others who had swarmed aboard _seaQuest_. Didn't matter, really, so long as it didn't mean he'd let more unnecessary death take place.

So few deaths were fixed, really, on a wide scale, looking across the universe at different times. Sometimes, the ones that were fixed didn't seem important. They were just ordinary people. No one special. Well, not at first glance. But everyone had the potential to be special, to make their mark. Some did. Some didn't. But it wasn't so much what they did or didn't do, he'd learned, but who they'd touched, and how those people continued on. It was complex, not simple, and it was entirely unpredictable.

Well, usually.

They were still sinking. The hull siphons hadn't kicked in yet, if they'd even been reconnected. But whoever had been coming was gone now. He could hear remarkably well under the water, and he couldn't detect any footsteps hammering on the metal above.

The current was strong down here, but he was still holding the railing next to the stairs, and he used it to pull himself to the surface. He was cold, and he was wet, and he'd let himself get distracted. There were still some things that didn't add up. He knew what the so-called meteorite fragment actually was, yes. He could guess how it had ended up where it had been found, and he knew how it had been brought back to _seaQuest_. But something told him that it wasn't all quite as simple as it looked, and he wasn't willing to fiddle with the TIR, disabling its functions or dismantling it, until he figured out what was what.

* * *

A/N: All right, I'll admit I was cheating a bit with the TARDIS, but these are special circumstances, ones which will be made clear soon enough. And, as always, many thanks to those who take the time to review.


	8. Chapter 8

Scott Keller, who had been in Bridger's quarters with permission to access Professor Martinson's databanks, was about ready to give up on finding the location of the Doctor's home planet.

And then he heard the strangest sound, unlike any other he'd ever heard before. Spinning around, he watched as a tall blue box—police box, he saw as it solidified—materialized in front of him. Before he had a chance to wonder, the door in the front opened, and the Doctor came out.

He was soaking wet.

"Not the storeroom, I take it," he said, looking around, his suit and hair still dripping slightly. He'd shut the door to the box—his ship, Keller realized—behind him. "Captain's quarters, then?"

Keller managed to nod, but he couldn't contain his grin.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "What?" he asked. "I expected Bridger would've told you, of all people. I thought that's what he planned to do once I left that meeting." A pause. "Er, how long ago was that meeting?"

"Not quite an hour ago," Keller answered, finding his voice. "And you were—?"

"Realizing that this—" and here the Doctor produced from his pocket what must have been the meteorite fragment Dr. Westphalen had shown him "—isn't what it looks like. At all. And that it's active, which I didn't really expect, though I suppose I _should_ have expected it, given how things tend to go when I'm around." He caught Keller's look and explained, "It's a bit of technology that shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be anywhere, really; all of these things were supposed to be destroyed. But some races aren't as strict with regulations as others are."

"And who created that?" Keller asked, eager to learn more.

"You lot did," the Doctor replied. "Well, you will. With a bit of help. But not for a long while yet. 51st century, or thereabouts. You didn't do a very good job. Too difficult to control. Didn't get past preliminary testing. Well, most didn't. Someone apparently thought they'd try this out again, and got a little more than they bargained for, I expect. Explains why there's only one half, though. They used the other to get back. Or tried to. Not sure if it worked; I can't trace it. But they were too sloppy to take this with them, so it remained here, and who knows what it went through." He paused, but it wasn't a long enough pause for Keller to remark on that. "And, yes," he added, "I _know_ I'm wet. Give me a few hours and I'll dry off." Another pause. "Didn't have time to change, let alone look for another towel after the one I already had got soaked through. I was in a bit of a rush." He hesitated one more time, then asked, "You don't think the salt water will ruin this suit, do you? I love this suit."

Keller looked him up and down again. "What happened to you?"

The Doctor sighed. "I was thrown back about four months. Unintentionally. And, well, _seaQuest_ was sinking, and I ended up getting a little bit more than just my feet wet." He stopped for a moment. "_Fortunately_," he continued, drawing out the word, "I was _very_ lucky, and I managed something that's a bit more tricky than you'd expect, and I managed to get the TARDIS to come to me. That doesn't always work, though, what I did. You tend to need a very special set of circumstances. And something that's meddling with time, usually. Namely, _this_." He tossed the meteorite fragment that really must not be a simple meteorite fragment into the air and caught it. "It's a temporal intentionality recreator—a TIR. Except, only part of it is here, as I said, and all it can do is send you back in time. But, once you're there, you're stuck. Unless you're brilliantly clever like me, of course, and happen to have a time machine of your own."

"So you really are a time traveller?" Keller asked, wanting to hear it for himself.

The Doctor gave him a look that told him, in no uncertain terms, that the man thought he must be thick for asking. "Of course I'm a time traveller. I'm a Time Lord. It'd be a bit embarrassing _not_ being a time traveller." He nodded towards the video screen upon which Keller had been looking at various star charts, the latest of which was still displayed. "You won't find Kasterborous on there. It's too far away. You lot haven't discovered it. And that means, before you ask, that I can't tell you where to look. Introducing things before their time can get a bit messy. Well, that, or it can liven up a party. I love parties. I was at a brilliant one in 17th century France a while back. They really know how to party, those French. Lovely people. Can't make a banana daiquiri as well as me, of course, but that's something I expect they'll pick up on in time, don't you think?"

It took Keller a moment to understand everything the Doctor was saying. "You've been to various periods in Earth's history, then?"

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, sure. I've been all over. Spent loads of time travelling. Haven't stopped since I started, not really." But then his expression sobered and he glanced down at the—what had he called it? A TIR?—again, adding, "Seen a lot worse than this, too, in all that time. I'm just lucky I found it. Can you imagine the trouble you lot would get into with something like this?" He shook his head. "Normally, I'd just take this and be on my way, but there's still something that isn't quite right here, and I need to figure out what that is. And, since it started here, looking around here first would be my best bet." He pocketed the device. "Has _seaQuest_ picked up anything else that doesn't belong on Earth, to your knowledge?"

Keller's brow creased. "Besides that hologram of the last alien species she encountered, you mean?"

"It wasn't a—" The Doctor stopped, and waved off whatever he was going to say. "Never mind. Yes. Besides that."

"I brought back some geologic core samples from Mars," he answered. "Some minerals, even a few fossilized _Yullenia bentleyi_."

"Where did you take your samples?" the Doctor asked, not looking at all surprised by the news of the fossilized snail. Keller wondered what else he knew about.

"Tharsis Bulge, Olympus Mons—all over the surface, really."

The Doctor closed his eyes from a moment. "That was Earth's first manned mission to Mars, then, yes? Spent about a month collecting samples and then headed back? Nothing long term?" He frowned and opened his eyes. "Well, yes, of course nothing long term. I already know the answer to that. Don't know why I asked. But you lot came back before _seaQuest_ was attacked, and since I was just there, I would have felt something if this had anything to do with that. Well, that's a bit of a relief, then. Didn't need to encounter traces of another hostile Martian species in such a short time. If I missed the last one, who knows what else the Ice Warriors contained?" He shook his head. "Never mind. I think I know what I'm missing. I just can't put my finger on it. It'll come to me." And without another word, he spun on his heels and left the room.

Keller stared after him. He was a real alien, an intelligent, sentient species from another planet—the sort of thing Keller had always dreamed of discovering. The _Yullenia bentleyi_ fossils had been impressive, yes, and proof that Mars must have had water on it for quite some time for the evolutionary process to advance so far. The discovery of the alien spaceship a few weeks ago had been both thrilling and humbling, and the interaction with the alien hologram was not an experience he would ever forget. But now he had met another alien, not a Martian, and not, according to him, from anywhere near the M-100 galaxy, where the last intelligent life had come from. He'd called himself a Time Lord, and he had, apparently, been visiting Earth for years, undetected because of his physiological similarities.

He had also, if Keller was interpreting things correctly, come across something on Mars recently—recently for him, at least, if not for anyone else—that had threatened him, and presumably others. Something Keller had, thankfully, missed in his explorations.

But something that, he would guess, would turn up in forty years. In 2059.

The Doctor was a time traveller, and he admitted that he had visited various parts of Earth's history—and, clearly, her future. He knew what happened. He knew what happened on Earth, the where and when of anything important. He'd known about the first manned mission to Mars, and he'd remembered a few details about it. If he knew about that, and about whatever happened in 2059, what else did he know?

If it was anything terrible, would he tell them? Or would he let them face whatever they would meet in the future unprepared, unprotected? And if he couldn't tell them that, would he consent to telling them other things? Not important things, nothing about major future events or advanced technology, but would he consent to tell them stories about other life out there, then? About his own race, for instance, or more about the race they'd encountered before? Had he even met them? He seemed knowledgeable, but no one would know all the life in the universe. Had the species forayed to his planet as well, or vice versa?

And what exactly was he doing? Travelling, he'd said. But _why_? To what end? Was he just studying them, or did he and his people have other plans in mind? And how many others like him were there, visiting Earth, disguised as humans? Surely he wasn't just visiting, dropping down to Earth for the pure enjoyment of it so frequently, not when there was an entire universe out there to be explored. Why try to protect them from whatever he'd found? It wasn't as if he could be trying to pay off a debt to them; they had nothing to offer someone who had access to the entire universe—and, presumably, the entirety of time—as compensation for his trouble.

But, no, maybe that wasn't right. He was too short-sighted. Earth had had her troubles in recent years, yes, and no doubt she would in the future, but if someone like the Doctor visited her so often, he surely must have a liking for both her features and her inhabitants, despite their shortcomings. So perhaps his travelling was all for the thrill of it, and when he found something that was wrong, he righted it, and that was that.

Keller glanced at the Doctor's ship again, finding that he really had to concentrate to keep it in sight. A police box. It wasn't very big, or didn't look that way from the outside. He rested a hand on the side, then knocked on it, testing. It still sounded like wood, and felt like it—wood that had been warmed in the sun. He tried the door, but it was locked. He should have known. Perhaps the Doctor would consent to letting him in if he asked.

But now, unfortunately, was not the time for asking. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he'd be able to glean something more while the Doctor carried on his investigations. And if that were to be the case, then he wasn't going to spend his time in here anymore. He needed to be out to join the party.

* * *

Dr. Kristin Westphalen was the first person to run into the Doctor after he left the captain's quarters. "What ha—?"

The Doctor didn't let her finish. "This," he said, brandishing the meteorite fragment at her, "is not what you think it is. At all. When did you get it? How long ago?"

"Not terribly," Dr. Westphalen replied, wondering what he was after. "A few days ago, that's it."

The Doctor frowned at her words. "Days?" he repeated, as if he didn't believe her.

"Days," she confirmed, somewhat disconcerted.

"But I thought…." The Doctor closed his eyes. "I thought Captain Bridger said you'd returned over a week ago."

Dr. Westphalen laughed. "I think I know my own schedule," she said.

The Doctor looked at her then, and she didn't like the look in his eyes. "Do you?" he queried, in the most serious tone of voice she'd heard him use yet. "Do you really?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know," the Doctor answered. "It doesn't make sense. TIRs don't _do_ that. They just don't. It's not in their capabilities."

"I beg your pardon?" Dr. Westphalen asked, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about now. What in heaven's name was a TIR? Not, she figured, the product of lachrymation, since even though tears cleanse the eyes, they certainly don't affect the memory, as the Doctor seemed to be implying.

The Doctor looked agitated now. "It doesn't make _sense_," he hissed again, still ignoring her. "It should, but it doesn't. Why doesn't it?"

"Doctor, would you mind explaining yourself?" Dr. Westphalen asked, deciding it was better to break in now than to let him ramble on.

The Doctor stopped his mutterings and sighed. "I thought I had this figured out," he said. "I really did. It made sense, all of it. A TIR. That's it. Just…a TIR, a bit of technology that shouldn't be where it is, one that manipulates time, creating shortcuts to the past. But that's all it does. Create shortcuts. Ways there and back, no stops in between. That's all it does. That's all it can do."

"Then why doesn't it make sense?" she quizzed practically, knowing he wasn't telling her something.

"Because you've had it for over a week," the Doctor answered.

"But I haven't," she protested. "I can't have. I only discovered it a week ago. I certainly haven't had it for longer."

The Doctor stared at her for a moment. "Did anyone else touch this, besides you and me?" She shook her head, but when she began explaining, he interrupted her. "No. Don't bother. I know what you think. What I need to know is what everyone else is saying."

"But it'll be the same," she said, still trying to make sense of what he was saying. "Everyone knows that. Mine was the last launch to arrive, before you and Commander Keller came and the rest of the crew was taken to the surface vessels. We haven't had contact with anyone else."

"Maybe the story's the same," the Doctor allowed, "but the timing's not." And before she could question him further, he took off at a run down the corridor.

* * *

It didn't make sense. It ought to make sense, but it didn't, not a lick of sense in the whole situation. Not terribly unusual, for him. Things didn't always go the way they should, as they ought to or as he expected. But this was different. It _had_ to be a TIR. He _knew_ it was. He'd _analyzed_ it, after all. His analysis had confirmed what he'd expected: that it was a TIR.

Except it couldn't be, not if it was doing what he thought it was doing.

Granted, he didn't know for sure what it was doing. He just had a very, very strong suspicion. Trouble was, that suspicion didn't line up with everything else, which was why he couldn't give his suspicion enough credence to call it a good guess—at least not until he got a few more facts by confirming other, more minor, suspicions.

The most disturbing thing was the time discrepancy. He was _sure_ Nathan Bridger had said it had been a week since Dr. Westphalen had returned with the TIR, no matter what the good doctor herself had insisted. But one person's word wasn't all he could go on, not if there was a chance that the person in question was being influenced, or affected, or infected, or something. He needed to check with other people, and check their word against the logs, and _then_ he might admit that he could have, just possibly, misheard.

Maybe.

_Unlikely_, but…not impossible.

The first person he ran into was one of the science staff who had known about the encounter with the N'zyritian, but it wasn't someone he recognized. The man would do perfectly for his little experiment, then. Pulling up short, the Doctor whipped out his psychic paper and waved it at the man before pocketing it again and saying, "Dr. John Smith. May I ask you a few questions?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "General things first. When, exactly, did _seaQuest _find that alien ship?"

The man—Dr. Levin, according to his nametag—started, and for a moment, he looked flustered. Then he said, apologetically, "I don't recollect the exact date, but it was a month or two ago now."

The Doctor frowned. "You don't remember the day you had undeniable proof of extraterrestrial life?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Dr. Levin hesitated. "Seven weeks ago, I think," he clarified.

"You _think_?" the Doctor repeated, letting a hint of disdain creep into his voice. Best to let the man think him a stickler for details; once that was established, he'd get as much accurate information as he could.

Dr. Levin shrugged apologetically. "I never did have a good memory for dates. And down here, the days seem to flow together."

"I'll bet you don't even remember when your head scientist returned," the Doctor said in a tone of voice he ordinarily would not have used for someone like poor Dr. Levin. It was that same jeering tone he'd used to irritate Davros back on the Crucible, something that had happened so long ago and not so very long ago at all.

"Oh, well, that was only two days ago," Dr. Levin answered, unaware that the Doctor wasn't paying him much mind anymore. "I do remember that, yes. And then we were informed of your visit the next day."

Something that had happened so long ago and not so very long ago at all.

That was it. It had to be.

Oh, he'd been so thick not to realize that immediately.

"And when," the Doctor asked carefully, "did _seaQuest_ perform the experiment using the hull siphons to refloat a sinking ship?"

Dr. Levin looked surprised. "That must've been eight months ago. Why ask about that?"

"Because it happened a lot more recently than eight months ago," the Doctor answered grimly. "Do you know what that is? That swelling and shrinking? It's all twisted out of proportion, days and weeks and months not getting their full value or getting more than their share."

Dr. Levin was clearly confused now. "I thought you were here to question us about the alien," he said slowly.

"What, and you think that just because the alien you encountered was humanoid, it must have no more control over time than you do?" the Doctor asked. He paused, reconsidering, and added, "Well, most of the time I suppose you'd be right. _However_, that's not true in all cases, not even in this one, and believe me, I know—no one knows better than me. _That_ is a more apt explanation of why I am here, don't you think, if I'm an expert in the very thing that seems to be going wrong?" Another pause. "Well, that's not to say that I'm _not _a bit of an expert in alien encounters, too. Had loads of those, myself. There's probably no one else on Earth who knows more than me at the moment." The Doctor stopped, then added, "That's not really bragging if it's true, is it?"

"Let me get this straight," Dr. Levin said. "You think that the alien we encountered not only can manipulate time but did?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, that's not right at all," he admonished. "Can't you listen? What I _think_ is that something—something other than the N'zyritian you ran into, mind—is manipulating time, right here, right now. Through this," he added, pulling out the TIR-that-might-not-be-a-TIR-after-all.

Dr. Levin frowned. "The meteorite fragment Dr. Westphalen brought back?"

The Doctor brightened. "Oh, you've seen it before, have you?" Dr. Levin nodded, and the Doctor continued, "Ooh, that's a bit of a relief, then. I'd been thinking that it just affected those who'd touched it, but then you came along, and I was starting to think that the effects must have spread, but if you've seen it, then maybe that's the pattern I should have been looking for." He paused. "Who else has seen it? Do you know?"

"Most of the scientists," Dr. Levin answered carefully. "I mean, we all have our own pet projects, our interests on the side, and Dr. Westphalen was hoping one of us might be able to help her determine what its constituents are."

"And could you help her?" the Doctor asked, though he doubted the answer would be affirmative if Dr. Levin hadn't come in physical contact with the TIR.

Predictably, Dr. Levin shook his head. "No, I'm more interested in hypnotic regression."

"Are you, now? We really must have a bit of a chat, then, at a better time. But, right now, I think it would be better if I tracked down anyone on board who could have helped Dr. Westphalen."

"You'd have a time trying to do that," Dr. Levin informed him. "There wasn't anyone who thought they knew enough to help. All they could do were the same things she was doing, and even when she showed us her analyses, no one saw anything different than she did."

"And what about the military staff?" the Doctor pressed. "Did any of them know anything?"

Another shake of the head. "No. That's why Dr. Westphalen asked Commander Keller to come aboard. He knows more than any of us about that sort of thing."

The Doctor frowned. "I asked that Commander Keller be here, to aid in my questioning. He's not here because Dr. Westphalen asked."

This time he was met with a shrug. "Maybe you did request that, but probably the only reason they complied was because Dr. Westphalen wanted the same thing."

"Is it now?" The Doctor's frown deepened. This was all a bit more complex than he'd thought if small things like that were actually _changing_. Of course, considering how many times his opinion had evolved over the course of the conversation with the good Dr. Levin, that really shouldn't have been at all surprising. He wasn't entirely sure if what he had was a TIR anymore. Loads of evidence pointed to it _being_ one, but there were a few things that stood out, a few things that were wrong, that didn't line up as they ought to if it _was_ just a TIR. But if it wasn't, he wasn't entirely sure what it was, yet.

Well, whatever it was, one thing that he had to find out very quickly was whether or not it was here intentionally. If _seaQuest_ and her crew were targeted, for whatever the reason, then he was, likely as not, dealing with something who wasn't making itself known yet, but what was biding its time, watching and waiting, to see what he'd do. And if they weren't targeted, then he'd have to find out what, really, had made Dr. Westphalen pick the TIR up in the first place, and whether or not anyone else would have been sufficient if they'd taken her place and picked the TIR up in her stead, taking the unsteadiness of time somewhere else entirely.

He'd track down one of the military personnel, then, and ask them a few questions. If he got the same response that he was getting from Dr. Levin, then he was in a spot of trouble, no question about it. If not, then the effects of the spread did follow a pattern, and a predictable one, so it wouldn't take him long to sort it once he figured out what was initiating the pattern and how.

Easy.

Well, easy in theory.

Might be a tad more difficult in practice, though.

But he was good at this sort of thing. It wouldn't be anything he couldn't handle.

Or, at least, it shouldn't be.

* * *

A/N: And now the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place. Well, nearly into place; they don't quite fit yet, or at least not where the Doctor's been putting them. Now, it may come off as a bit odd to have the Doctor almost certain that the fragment is one thing (ie, a TIR) and then have him questioning that certainty, but frankly, if he's not second-guessing himself after _The Waters of Mars_, I'd be quite surprised. Also, thank you to everyone who has read my story thus far and found it interesting enough to comment on.


	9. Chapter 9

Benjamin Krieg, having accepted the fact that the Doctor was an alien, was intent on finding him to ask how he had managed to procure such a fine forgery for his ID. He wasn't sure whether or not the Doctor would actually tell him, but he had everything to gain and nothing to lose by asking, so it was, he decided, in his best interest to ask anyway. Perhaps the Doctor had made the forgery himself and had only enlisted _his_ help to make that false visitor's pass because he didn't know what it was supposed to look like. If he'd consider teaching him his skills—for a small fee in return, of course—then his…side business, whatever it happened to be at the moment, could be made much more profitable.

He'd had enough trouble rebuilding his name after that business with the Krieglite. He'd been able to move some things in—a bit of meat off the black market, for instance—but he hadn't been able to move anything out. He hadn't burned so many bridges that no one would talk to him, but they were always a lot more wary in their dealings with him. That's not to say that they hadn't watched their step right off the start, but they seemed to want a good deal more proof than they used to.

He was quite happy, therefore, to come out of his quarters to encounter the Doctor again when he was alone. They could discuss things in private. "Doctor," Krieg said, smiling, even though he was wondering why the Doctor was soaked through. "Just the man I wanted to see. I wanted to ask—"

"When was _seaQuest_ overtaken?" the Doctor demanded, interrupting. "When you conducted that experiment, with the hull siphons. You were on board then; I saw you. When was it?"

Krieg stared at him for a moment, watching as a bead of water collected at the tip of one of the Doctor's messy locks before falling to his shoulder. "About five months ago," he answered carefully. "But what do you mean you saw me there?"

"I mean exactly what I say I mean," the Doctor answered. "I saw you there. Simple as that. You were there, and I was there, and I got a bit wet when she flooded. And that shouldn't have addled my brains. It really shouldn't have. But I was still duped. It's not what I think it is. It's just pretending to be."

Krieg was still shaking his head. "But how could you have been on board? They would have noticed you!"

"Oh, they did," the Doctor said. "Nearly got me, but I got away, and then I hid, and then I conducted a little analysis that told me that meteorite fragment of Dr. Westphalen's is actually a bit of technology that sends you back to the time of your choosing if you concentrate on a certain point long enough, or back in time in general if you're too vague when you've got a hold of it, which I'd suspected at that point since I'd ended up there in the first place. But it—"

"Just a minute," Krieg broke in. "You mean to tell me that the fragment is a time travel device?"

"That's what it looks like," the Doctor started, "but it—"

"And where is it now?"

"It's in my pocket," the Doctor replied, "and you wouldn't believe the headache I've got because of that. Means I need to check something else, though. Which is why I need to see if—"

"I could hold on to it for you," Krieg suggested. The ideas were already percolating in his mind. Nothing too extreme. A quick trip, that's all. Five, ten minutes. That's all he needed. He could go back and apologize for something he'd regretted the moment the words had come out of his mouth. He'd tried to apologize before, but Katie had never given him the time of day, and then so much time had passed that he would have felt foolish apologizing for something that had happened so long ago. But he knew where he could corner her, precisely when he'd need to go back to.

It wouldn't change much, that apology. But then, perhaps, Katie would listen to him again, when it was just the two of them. She'd probably still hate his guts and wouldn't be able to stand the sight of him, but perhaps there would be a little less friction between them when they had to work together. They always put their differences aside when they needed to act as a team, but he wasn't convinced that she didn't still hold a grudge against him. He was sure she'd deny that, but he was a hard man to get over, after all, possessing all the charming qualities that he did and with good looks to boot.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

He'd meant it to be a joke.

She still hadn't forgiven him.

Then again, she'd never given him the chance to apologize so she could.

He'd planned what he was going to say. Not a rote response by any means; he'd given this a lot of thought. He'd had a lot of time to, unfortunately. But he needed to tell Katie the truth, that's all. He hadn't seen the line until after he had crossed it because, good looks or not, he was an idiot, and he still slipped into old habits when he saw her, and they never should have been married because he'd never loved her for herself, he'd loved them, the idea of them together, a perfect match—except they weren't, not at all. And he'd always wanted a ship of his own, but she was the one with the skills to run one and she always had been, which was why he was now saluting her. And he was sorry, so very sorry, for hurting her like that. He hadn't meant to. He just hadn't thought about what he'd been saying until he'd said it.

The Doctor shook his head. "I can't let you," he said. "It's too dangerous."

"I'll be careful," Krieg persisted, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice, not wanting to let the Doctor know what he planned.

"No. I can't." The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it standing straight up. "Just, trust me. I can't. You don't know what this does."

Oh, he knew precisely what it did, what it could do for him, if the Doctor would let him have it for just five minutes. Even three. "Let me get you a towel, then. You can dry off a bit."

"I don't have time," the Doctor said.

"Five seconds, that's all. I've got one in here," Krieg insisted, jerking his thumb towards his quarters, where he kept some of the more sensitive supplies, as was his privilege as supply officer.

The Doctor, to Krieg's delight, relented and let himself be led inside.

"I could get you a change of clothes, too, if you like. Scrounge you up a uniform that would fit. It would go with your…." Krieg trailed off. "What did you do with your visitor's badge?"

"My what?" the Doctor repeated. "Oh, right. Yes. Pocket, I think. Not sure which one; wasn't paying too much attention to what I was doing at that point. Tad more concerned with other things at that time."

"You should be displaying that at all times," Krieg reminded him.

"I really, really don't like all these technicalities, you know," the Doctor muttered, digging through his pockets, unearthing their contents in his search. Wallet, glasses, yo-yo, penlight, key, clockwork mouse, ball, soggy bag of candy, magnifying glass, Rubik's cube, a few coins of a currency Krieg didn't recognize, meteorite fragment, a pair of those old blue-and-red 3-D glasses, slightly mangled now with the cardboard softened from the water, a couple of Christmas baubles—and still the things kept coming, all sorts of odds and ends of various shapes and sizes.

"You…keep a lot of things in your pockets," Krieg commented as the Doctor unearthed a browning banana and made a face.

"Been a bit busy," the Doctor said, now discarding some sort of spinning noisemaker toy. "Haven't exactly had a lot of time to clean them out. I mean, I move some things over, but I don't—aha! Got it." He grinned, untangling the laminated badge—the real one that he'd had with him when he'd arrived with Keller—from a stethoscope before pinning it to his suit again. "There we are. Sorted." He reached for the pile, apparently intending to put everything back, but Krieg caught his arm.

"You should probably wait until everything's dry, you included," Krieg said. "It'll take longer if you stuff everything into your pockets again." He was wondering how the Doctor had gotten them all in there in the first place, but now was not the time to ask.

"Well, all right," the Doctor agreed, "but I still need that fragment—"

"It's not going to harm anything if you leave it with everything else," Krieg pointed out reasonably. "And if it's causing that headache of yours, then aren't you better off without it?"

The Doctor looked doubtful. Then, "You can lock this room, yes?" Krieg nodded. "Good." The Doctor picked up the penlight—no, it wasn't a penlight, it was…something else, something he didn't recognize—and pocketed it again. "Right. We're set. Let's go."

"You're forgetting something," Krieg said.

The Doctor's forehead creased. "Am I? What?"

"Towel," Krieg replied, tossing one to him.

The Doctor caught it and grinned. He scrubbed at his face and hair before throwing the towel over the side of the bed to dry. "All set, then." He started out of the room, and Krieg followed.

"You go ahead," Krieg said. "I'll catch up after I've locked up here."

The Doctor gave a distracted nod and went off, already intent on something else.

Krieg, once he was certain that the Doctor had gone, went back into the room, locked it, and found the fragment.

* * *

The Doctor found Nathan Bridger on the bridge. Once command was deferred to his commander, the Doctor pulled the captain out of earshot of the crew. "There's something that's really not right here," he quietly confided.

"Tell me something I don't know," Bridger returned.

The Doctor frowned. "You've noticed it, too, then? The time distortions?"

"Time distortions?" Bridger repeated.

"I've asked two different people when you conducted that experiment of yours with the hull siphons to refloat a sinking ship," the Doctor started, "and I got two different answers, neither of which is the right one."

Bridger kept his expression neutral as he said, "Fourteen weeks ago tomorrow."

The Doctor thought for a moment and then slowly shook his head. "No. Not quite. But you're nearest to the mark." He paused. "When did Dr. Westphalen bring that fragment back?"

"A week ago," Bridger answered. "May I ask what—?"

"You told me this morning that it had been _over_ a week ago," the Doctor said softly. "Well, this morning for you, at any rate. Been a bit longer than that for me. But that's my point. I'm not getting the same answer. I asked one of the scientists, a Dr. Levin, and he told me she'd come back two days ago. And Dr. Westphalen herself believes she's only had it on board for a few days, that she only _found_ it a week ago."

Bridger didn't have an answer to that.

"Why did you think something was wrong?" the Doctor asked.

Bridger smirked. "Besides the fact that you keep saying something is? Well, you're soaked through."

The Doctor sighed. "I'm getting really tired of that," he said. "I should've just waited till I'd dried off, but I'd thought I'd had it figured out. Only now, you've just confirmed that I don't, not at all. I mean, calling it a TIR didn't sit right, but it had seemed to fit. It tricked me."

"Oh?" The look on Bridger's face was one the Doctor recognized—he wanted an explanation, and he was prepared to wait for it.

"In simple terms," the Doctor said slowly, "it's beginning to look like that fragment, whatever it is, warps time. And when time warps, things change. You can't tell, but I can. That's why it doesn't like me, why it's trying to force me away. Because I can tell what it's doing, what it's wrenching apart." The Doctor closed his eyes. "I believed it, you know. It tried to trick me, and for a minute, I believed it. And once it had that belief, it kept it, used it against me, and it took me a while to question it. A TIR, I'd thought. Maybe it was, once, but someone had fiddled with it. It doesn't just slide through time anymore. It twists it."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It takes time," the Doctor repeated, opening his eyes, "and twists it, around, backwards, inside out, stretching it and shortening it and looping it. It doesn't create time, and it doesn't destroy it, so anything that you've done still stands, but if you're _sensitive_ to the warping, well, you may notice that things don't happen in quite the same order for you as they do for everyone else. When the warping is localized, you don't notice that anything's wrong unless you're sensitive to the changes. By the time everyone else in the point of origin can sense it…."

"We're in trouble," Bridger finished.

"Loads," the Doctor agreed.

"And you're certain this time?"

The Doctor knew what Bridger was asking—if he'd been so convinced he'd had it right before and it turned out that he'd had it wrong, how could he be confident in his deduction now? But that was the trouble. He wasn't certain. "Not entirely," he admitted. "What I do know is that _something_ is playing havoc with time. I don't know how, and I don't know why."

"And what are the chances that you can find this out?"

"I'm good at this sort of thing," the Doctor said instead.

"Doctor," Bridger said, raising his eyebrows, "I want to know what our chances are."

"I'm still missing a few pieces," the Doctor explained. "If I don't get those, and I'm guessing, it'll take a while. If I do get them, or even just one of them, it shouldn't take me very long at all to figure out precisely what's going on. I promise you, Captain Nathan Bridger, that I will fix whatever has gone wrong here as quickly as I can. I just need to find out what's causing everything first."

Bridger was silent for a moment. "Very well, Doctor. Thank you. I'll hold you to your promise. Please keep me informed."

He turned to go, but the Doctor caught his arm. "I know you're afraid," he said. "I don't blame you, not one bit. You can't trust your own memory anymore, not when it comes to remembering when things happened. And that's frightening. If I were in your situation, I'd be terrified."

Bridger met the Doctor's gaze and waited.

"You lot always did imagine that time's a lot more stable than it actually is," the Doctor continued. "And you don't change, not for ages, and even then it's only a few handfuls now and then who accept that, at least to begin with. And, right now, that imagined stability is crumbling. You're standing on a foundation that doesn't really exist. Now that it's been breached for you once, it's more likely to happen again."

"So I get to look forward to this in my future, then?" Bridger asked wryly.

"It's a distinct possibility," the Doctor answered.

"And it would be caused by something other than this, I take it."

"Most likely," agreed the Doctor. "I mean, technology's only one facet, but there's plenty of types of technology within that, so there are lots of possibilities there. Sometimes there's a set of quirky circumstances that assert themselves. Sometimes there's a door, or a shortcut, or a wrinkle, or a tear, whatever you want to call it, and you can get through that way. But most of those aren't natural, so that would be going back to the idea of technology. There aren't a lot of natural time anomalies out there, let alone one that would allow someone to pass through it."

"Name one."

The Doctor shook his head. "Doesn't work like that. At this specific point in history, one doesn't exist. Just because it's naturally occurring, doesn't mean it's always going to be there. That's assuming things are static, and they're not. They're always fluctuating." He stopped for a moment. "Even if I did name something, you wouldn't recognize it. For all you'd know, I could be making it up. But even if I go into detail about natural versus synthetic paths, or methods, or what have you, I'd never have the time to tell you all the ways. I'm not even sure I know all of them, and I know a lot. Trust me."

Bridger smiled. "I do," he responded simply.

"I won't betray that trust," the Doctor promised. "Not unless…." He trailed off. "Not unless I have to, to protect you."

Bridger nodded. "I can live with that," he said amiably.

The Doctor, however, was still serious. "I mean it," he said. "I've had to do things before that I'd rather not."

"No doubt," Bridger agreed. "I have, too. We all have. Sometimes there isn't another way, no matter how much we wish there were."

"Thank you," the Doctor said. "Really, thank you. It's…good to know someone understands." He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and saying, "I'd like to look at your records, if I may. You keep electronic and paper copies of the logs, right?"

Bridger nodded. "I'll show you to them."

* * *

The hard copy of the ship's log, the one Bridger routinely wrote by hand himself, had the right dates.

The Doctor soon discovered that this was not true of the electronic copy, which was relayed to him through _seaQuest_'s holographic system via Professor Martinson.

When he'd accessed those same records from Lucas's computer, the dates he'd looked at—mainly the date of the day in which he'd suddenly found himself, though he'd checked a few others while he was at it—had reflected what the hard copy told him. Something was managing to skew the electronic copies, along with the memories of the people aboard this ship. But all it was altering, it seemed, was perceptions—otherwise, the hard copy would read the same as everything else.

Shrinking and swelling, like he'd said. Distorting. That's what it was doing.

He just didn't know why.

Or why the perceptions of the crew were all different. Some were more affected than others, had different perceptions than others. Technology didn't usually do that. It was more strict, more regular, ticking off so much time for everyone. There shouldn't be any variation. It was less likely to be noticed that way. Ignoring that didn't make sense.

He was hesitant to just call it primitive, experimental technology, full of flaws, and leave it at that.

He wasn't convinced that that was the case.

Well, not anymore, at least.

The Doctor sighed. He still hadn't been able to figure out the proper description of that feeling he'd had, that sort of pressure that—

The Doctor blinked.

That sort of pressure that, right now, wasn't there anymore.

"Oh, no." He knew what that meant. "No, no, no, no, no…." Why hadn't he noticed it earlier? His head had been too full of thoughts. But that was hardly an excuse for not recognizing the importance of that absence. "Nononononono!" Someone had taken that fragment, used it, not knowing what it could do, bumbling into something they didn't understand, getting themselves stuck back wherever they'd gone—_humans_. Never giving a moment's consideration of the consequences, just going ahead and _doing_ without knowing what could happen, assuming they'd be perfectly safe because that entire species thought it was invincible until they got one good scare….

"Are there any other entries you wish to review, Doctor?"

"What?" The response was automatic, and it brought the Doctor out of his thoughts. He looked at the hologram who had addressed him, and he was suddenly struck by a thought. "Yes, actually. Review your files. All of them—entries, records, data logs, the lot. Look for modifications, for discrepancies, like I was doing with you just now, and give me a list."

"I cannot detect—"

"_Try_," the Doctor ordered. He didn't have to be polite. It was just a bit of technology, after all. No feelings to hurt. "I know what sort of technology you are, and I've looked at your modifications, and I've made a few myself, as you well know. Use that, all your resources, and tell me what doesn't seem quite right. It'll seem fine on the surface, but if you dig deeper, you'll see it's not."

He even knew who it had been, who had decided to go for a little _trip_. Well, it was highly unlikely it had been anyone else. Krieg wouldn't have had any reason _not_ to lock the door, after all. But he may have felt he had plenty of reason _to_ lock it, once he was on the other side—with the time travel device the Doctor had so thoughtfully explained to him, the same device he had never, as he'd intended, managed to say didn't quite work the way Krieg was obviously thinking it worked.

But from what he knew about Lieutenant Krieg, even he wouldn't be stupid enough to go for a random trip. He had something that he wanted changed, which was why the Doctor had asked—well, told—Professor Martinson to look for some sort of change. But he was being told now, quite clearly, that no such change could be detected.

Nothing important enough to be noted, then.

Well, not important enough to anyone else.

He was terrible at this sort of thing. He couldn't very well spend his time randomly searching _seaQuest_'s history. He'd have to find someone Krieg confided in. Trouble was, he had no idea where to start.

He'd ask Darwin. He'd know. He spent enough time watching the workings of this ship and the people contained within it.

The Doctor shut off the holographic link, gave the TARDIS a reassuring pat and told her he'd be back there soon, and set off to talk to the resident dolphin.

* * *

Lucas had decided to spend some time with Darwin, but when he arrived at the moon pool, the Doctor was already there, vocorder in hand—though Lucas had to wonder if he really needed it, if anything he'd said earlier was true.

He hadn't heard the Doctor's question, but he did catch Darwin's reply: "Lucas."

"Hey, Darwin," he called out, grinning as the Doctor jumped.

The Doctor glanced back at Darwin as Lucas joined them at the edge of the moon pool. "Was that your answer, or were you trying to give me some warning this time? I mean, I expect you'd know, seeing what you found out about me, but—"

"Not so much at once," Lucas cautioned. "You'll confuse the system."

"What?" The Doctor looked at him blankly for a moment. Then, "Oh, right. Sorry. Go ahead, Darwin."

"Answer is Lucas," Darwin confirmed. "Don't know you."

The Doctor's eyebrows drew together. "What?" he said again. "But you'd said that the storm had come!"

"Sand storm," the dolphin replied.

"What?"

"You thought he'd meant you?" Lucas asked disbelievingly.

"But I…." The Doctor trailed off and tried again. "I mean, I thought…." He stopped again, shaking his head, and then turned to look back at Lucas. "Well, yes, actually, I did. One of the names given to me is the Oncoming Storm."

Lucas smirked. "Nice name," he said.

The Doctor wasn't smiling. "The same creatures who call me that have other names for me. Ka Faraq Gatri. The Bringer of Darkness, the Destroyer of Worlds. That's the sort of storm they've faced, and I'm not proud of it." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Lieutenant Krieg confides in you, Darwin tells me."

"Ben?" Lucas asked, still somewhat surprised by the rapid change in the conversation. "Yeah, I guess. Sometimes. Why?"

"Because I need to find him," the Doctor answered, opening his eyes, "and I don't know when to look."

"You mean you don't know where to look," Lucas corrected.

"Oh, I know where to look," the Doctor countered. "He's on this ship. I'm just not sure when." Before Lucas could say anything to that, the Doctor continued, "Can you think of a time when Krieg did something he regretted, or regretted not doing something he should have, or maybe a time he's really happy to _have_ done something that would otherwise have been a missed opportunity?"

"Are you trying to tell me he travelled through time?" Lucas asked incredulously. "How?"

"With that object Dr. Westphalen erroneously thought was a meteorite fragment," the Doctor replied. That was all part of the disguise, that initial impression. Real meteorite or not, that object—whatever it really was, since it certainly wasn't a TIR—wasn't really a fragment of it, and that was the trouble. It had taken him too long to realize that, particularly once it had started trying to affect _his_ senses. Not that it could quite manage it, but it was enough to bother him, making him stop for a moment now and again, and it should have been enough for him to know immediately, but it didn't want to be found. He'd just fallen prey, initially, to its tricks, and he'd been fooled for a time—too long, really—but he'd work it out soon, he was certain. He had to. The way things seemed to be going, he was running out of time, and that was never a pleasant sensation.

"Really? How did that work?"

"Normally, I'd love to tell you what I could, even if you wouldn't understand the half of it," the Doctor said, "but right now, I need to get him back before he messes things up, so would you mind telling me what you can think of?"

"But how would I know what he'd be doing?" Lucas asked.

The Doctor sighed. "You said he tells you things, so I'm betting he'd tell you about something he really regretted or about something he's really happy about, yes? It would be one of those times. He's gone back to change something, and he had to've had something in mind, something that's been eating away from him for a long time. Well, I say long. That's all relative."

Lucas frowned, trying to figure this out. "Why would he want to change something he's happy about?"

The Doctor snorted. "Did I say he means to change something he's happy about?"

"You said he's gone back to change something."

"Yes, _something_. Probably, something he regretted. And if he manages it, he'd be happy about it, wouldn't he?"

"Well, if he changed something and he's happy about it, why ask about things he regretted?"

"Because I don't know if he's managed to change it yet."

Lucas grinned. He knew the answer to this one. "But if he's in the past, then it's already happened, so it's already been changed."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "And do you really think that the effects of the change would be instantaneous?" He shook his head. "You humans are all alike, always pretending to understand time, but you don't, not one bit. Darwin here knows it better than you, I'd bet, but you could never ask him about it, not through that system of yours. He'd have to put his concepts into human words, and he can't. It wouldn't come out right. None of your languages _have_ words for those concepts. And you're blinded because you can't—"

"You can't sum up my entire race like that!" Lucas interrupted angrily. How could the Doctor just come here and start ranting at him, saying they were all alike? "Not everybody's the same."

"Am I saying they are?" the Doctor countered. Then he paused, admitting, "All right, so maybe I _was_, just a little bit, but you _are_ all the same when it comes to this. I haven't met a human yet who _really_ understands what they're getting into, and believe me, I've met a lot of them."

Lucas was not convinced. "But you don't give us a chance, do you? You didn't give me one."

The Doctor had a curiously blank expression on his face. "All right." He sat down on the edge of the pool and looked expectantly at Lucas. "Explain time to me."

Lucas shifted uneasily on his feet, wondering what exactly he was getting into. "Wanna narrow that down a bit?" he asked. "Give me a starting point?"

"Time travel, then."

"That's, um, still a bit…."

"What's your theory?" the Doctor provided, knowing what Lucas wanted. "How would you manage it? I've heard plenty of theories in my day. Some actually work. Well, to a point. But most of them have their own limitations. Like the string theory. Loads of limitations in that, but within them, it can still work. I've seen it."

"But I haven't…." Lucas trailed off. "I haven't given it any thought."

The Doctor smiled. "No, you haven't," he agreed. "You just jumped right in, not knowing what you were getting into. Things tend to be a bit of a mess when you do that, wouldn't you agree?" Lucas didn't say anything, so the Doctor continued, kindly returning to their initial subject, "Can you think of anything, then, that seems to stand out?"

Lucas didn't find this much easier than being asked to explain time without so much as a warning—because he was quite certain he'd be able to give the Doctor a good answer if he'd had any time to prepare one—but with this, at least, he knew where to start. Slowly, trying to remember everything, he began recounting a list of Krieg's grievances and achievements to the Doctor.

The Doctor's expression told Lucas that the list was longer than he'd hoped.

"I need to narrow it down," he muttered. Picking up the vocorder again, he asked, "Darwin, do you have any ideas?"

Lucas knew the sorts of things in Darwin's vocabulary, even if the program did build on itself. He and Dr. Westphalen had had to reprogram the language basis, after all, after the heat had fried it. "Doctor, I'm not sure—"

The Doctor held up a hand for silence. "Go on, Darwin," he coaxed. "You've got to have some idea, right? All that watching? You must've seen something."

"Don't know human words," came the disappointing response.

"Sorry," Lucas said, "but I did warn you."

"But you have an idea, right?" the Doctor pressed.

"Yes."

The Doctor grinned. "Good," he said, switching off the vocorder. "Now, let's hear that idea of yours."

"So you really can—?"

"Sh!"

Lucas fell into silence as he watched the Doctor listen to Darwin's clicks and whistles, asking questions now and again—though how he expected Darwin to understand him, Lucas didn't know—and frowning occasionally. After a few minutes, the Doctor turned back to Lucas. "Seems to me," he said, "that the most likely time was when there were a lot of kids on board. When was that?"

"Kids?" Lucas repeated. His first thoughts flew to all his friends from the Internex, but Darwin had to mean— "You mean Cleo and the rest? That was ages ago."

"Probably best if you don't try to give me a date," the Doctor said. "Just tell me what I'd need to know to look it up in the logs."

It was Lucas's turn to frown. "Why don't you want me to tell you the date?"

"Because chances are, you're wrong. And, no, I'm not just saying that because you're a child—"

"I'm _not_ a child!"

"Well, you're not an adult," the Doctor countered. He must have seen Lucas's expression because he sighed. "Just tell me…tell me where you found them, those children. You must've picked them up somewhere."

"Landau Munitions Depot," Lucas responded, still rather annoyed at the Doctor. "We rescued them."

"Landau Munitions Depot," the Doctor repeated. "Landau Munitions Depot. Okay. Good. I'll find out when you were there, then." Tossing the vocorder back at Lucas, the Doctor said, "Thank Darwin for me, will you?" and then raced out of the room.

Lucas looked at the device in his hand for a minute, and then he turned it on. "Darwin," he asked slowly, "can the Doctor really understand you?"

* * *

A/N: So, first off, I would like to thank Questfan for allowing me to *ahem* steal an idea or two for this chapter. I don't expect that it turned out as well as it could have, that conversation between Lucas and the Doctor, but it's meant to be a little critique of how sloppy _seaQuest_'s writers were when it came to explaining time travel on the show. I also want to thank everyone who takes the time to review, as I really do appreciate it.


	10. Chapter 10

The Doctor, having gone back to the appropriate date to retrieve Krieg—though not before he'd nipped back to the man's quarters to retrieve everything he'd left behind, including his TARDIS key, and leaving that pesky visitor's pass behind in its place before he lost it—was about to leave the TARDIS when something beeped at him.

It was a muffled beep, and it wasn't until it beeped again that he realized it was coming from somewhere within his coat, which was still slung over one of the coral supports.

The origin of the beeping was a device that he'd been in the middle of altering, fiddling with it to make it more sensitive to some of the more complex little changes that time underwent on occasion. Thing was, he hadn't actually finished it, not that he recalled. He'd been in the middle of toying with it a few months back when he'd caught sight of something that really shouldn't have been wandering around one of Copenhagen's harbours. Well, unless seven foot tall creatures that looked like a cross between a lizard and a chicken became surprisingly commonplace by 2273, but he somehow had his doubts, judging by the reactions.

It took a minute or so, but he finally located the device in question, and as he'd recalled, it wasn't completed.

Well, not as he'd intended to complete it, at any rate.

But with everything still hooked up to one thing or another, even if not in quite the same way as the final product would have been, it still seemed to work.

The Doctor looked at it for a moment, frowning. He shook it, then hit it, and still it read the same.

Perhaps 'work' wasn't quite the right term after all.

"Mirrored?" the Doctor asked the device incredulously, looking at the readings again. "It can't be mirrored." Time didn't do that, not under normal circumstances. Well, normal was a bit of a loose term, granted, but mirroring itself—that was, most definitely, not common.

_Mirroring_ meant that a change wasn't just integrated into the timestream, seamlessly written over whatever had existed without that change; it meant that the change had a mirror effect, an echo effect, rewriting each and every layer, not just creating a new one to lie on top of the old.

He could only think of a handful of beings that could pull that off, and some of them wouldn't take kindly to being labelled as a lowly 'being'. But none of those—

He'd have a look for himself. That device wasn't properly connected, that's all. It was incomplete. Inaccurate. Unreliable.

And, quite possibly, very, very right, even if it shouldn't be.

The Doctor thought back to the analysis he'd conducted that had confirmed his suspicions that the fragment had been a TIR. He'd been in a bit of a rush, and it hadn't been a very good analysis, come to think of it. All he'd done was see if what he had reacted as a TIR should, if it shared the same properties. He hadn't run anything to see if it did or contained something that was quite unlike TIRs. Sloppy of him, really. Poor work. But then, all he'd thought he'd been doing was confirming a conclusion in which he had been quite confident. And, to that end, he had.

Things hadn't gone downhill until after he'd gotten back to _seaQuest_'s present.

He _really_ needed to get another good look at that fragment, because it, apparently, wasn't at all what it appeared to be. It, like time itself, had layers. He'd been fooled, for a time, by the top few. Now, he wouldn't be satisfied until he _knew_ he'd gotten to the heart of it, even if it meant dismantling it piece by piece to figure out how it had been put together and why.

Well, providing it had been put together.

There was still a chance that it was a natural formation of some sort—just one that disguised itself to get what it needed, one that tricked and mimicked and fooled.

Stretching and shrinking, skewing and mirroring, overwriting and rewriting and changing, ever fluid and ever dynamic, eclipsing anything that might be fixed or static. Whatever it really was, it was dangerously close to _creating_ time, crafting it and shaping it, making new minutes out of the old.

The device in the Doctor's hands beeped again. He still hadn't turned it off. Not that he ever recalled turning it on, but things tended to jostle about in his pockets, and it being on didn't really surprise him.

First things first. Finding Krieg. The right Krieg, without the first one ever noticing the second, something that really ought to be easier to do with time mirroring itself the way it was. But theory didn't always pan out in practice, so he'd have to watch them carefully and make sure he nabbed the right one.

With a sigh, the Doctor slipped the TARDIS key around his neck, making sure the perception filter cloaked him, and then slipped off to find the fragment and its carrier.

* * *

Lieutenant Benjamin Krieg was grinning, absolutely ecstatic. Katie had heard him out, had listened to him, and as far as he was concerned, her throwing the towel at him meant that she'd accepted his apology. She'd been smiling, after all. And she'd stopped him from leaving the gym, giving him the chance to explain further. It was all going to work out.

He tossed the towel into the appropriate basket and started towards the door again, but someone caught his arm.

"You're a very hard man to find, Lieutenant Krieg," came a soft, somewhat chastising, voice.

He nearly jumped out of his skin. He recognized the voice as the Doctor's, but when he spun around to find him, he couldn't see him. "Where are you?" he asked in a loud whisper, eyes still scanning the room.

"Right here," the Doctor answered, and Krieg suddenly caught sight of him standing off to the side on his left. He was holding a key, and he didn't look entirely happy. "Please tell me you still have that fragment. I don't fancy chasing people through time."

"I was going to come right back," Krieg mumbled.

"You wouldn't have been able to," the Doctor said. "That fragment only seems to go one way. Well, at least it did for me. Perhaps it would have worked for you, having a different impression in your head. It seems to absorb the limitations you impose on it. Suits its disguise better that way. But I couldn't risk it not working. No telling how much damage you could do if you got stuck here."

Krieg stared at him. He hadn't considered not being able to get back. "I didn't know—"

"No, you didn't," the Doctor agreed, "but you didn't think, either." The tone was flat and the words were harsh, not even softened with an understanding smile. "I'll have that fragment back now, if you don't mind." He held out a hand.

"It's in my quarters," Krieg said. "It might fit in your pockets, but it's still too big for mine without being noticed."

The Doctor still didn't smile. Krieg wondered exactly how much trouble he was in. "I'll get it. Wait for me in the ward room."

"But you don't—"

"I'll find it," the Doctor interrupted. "And do watch your step, all right? I don't need you running into yourself. Or getting into trouble because someone thinks you're your past self. You don't know what you just did now. You can't know. But I do. I felt it, every single thread that was snapped in the process and every new one that sprang up to tie the timeline back together. So just…don't do it again."

He must have followed him in here, listened to every word he'd told Katie. That's what the Doctor had to mean. That's the only thing he'd changed, tracking her down and apologizing, making sure that it was just the two of them and that she wasn't in a position to leave the room the moment he entered. But if that were the case, why had he let him? Why hadn't he stopped him from saying anything? "Doctor," Krieg started carefully, "you're right. I didn't know what I was doing, and I'm sorry for that, for doing it in the first place, but why didn't you stop me if what I was doing was so terrible?"

The Doctor just looked at him for a moment. "Because it was something that could be changed," he said quietly, "and it was a good change, in the end. Things turn out better for it. And now they always have, always will." He swallowed, then added, "I accept your apology, Ben Krieg, even if you don't truly regret what you did. Everyone makes mistakes. Even me." And before Krieg could say anything else, the Doctor slipped the key he held on its string over his head, and Krieg found he couldn't focus on him anymore. He waited to hear retreating footsteps, but couldn't pick them out, and realized that the Doctor must have learned to tread softly.

That was something he could stand to learn, in the more figurative sense.

He didn't have any difficulties making his way to the ward room. He couldn't remember what he'd been initially doing at this time. It seemed so long ago now. Maybe running after one of the kids; he remembered that Crocker had had a time dealing with those two boys—Matthew and Brawley, if memory served. Though, that was mostly after he'd taught them the shell game. Maybe that's what he was doing now—teaching them the shell game in the mess hall. Not that he was entirely sure they hadn't seen it before; they'd been suspiciously good at it for beginners, even considering beginner's luck.

He wasn't sure how long it was until the Doctor joined him. "Found it?" he asked, more to say something than to get what he knew confirmed.

"I found it," the Doctor replied, moving to the corner of the room. "I might even know what it is. Really know, I mean. Not just fooled again."

"Not a good thing?" Krieg guessed, trying to read the Doctor's expression.

"Not what I expected," came the reply.

"But will—?"

"Everything will be fine," the Doctor answered. He fitted the key in his hand into the lock on the door of a tall blue box Krieg hadn't noticed before, unlocked it, and turned back to Krieg. "Come on, then." Krieg still hesitated, and the Doctor smiled. "I don't bite," he said.

"It's just…." Krieg forced himself to look at the box again, giving it a proper assessment. "It's a bit…small."

The Doctor's smile grew into a grin, and Krieg knew that if he was angry, he wasn't angry at him for what he'd done. "Sure about that?" he asked. "You might want to take a closer look." He pushed the door open with one hand and pushed Krieg forward with the other.

Krieg stopped just inside, staring, unable to find words.

The Doctor slipped in around him, closed the door, and ran up the ramp to the central console. "Still think it's too small?" he called.

Krieg shook his head, and the Doctor's grin widened. "Better come on up here," he advised. "Might be a bit of a bumpy ride. There are railings for a reason."

"This is amazing," Krieg said when he joined the Doctor, still staring at everything around him. "It's actually _bigger_ on the inside. That's just…amazing."

The Doctor was still grinning. "She is, isn't she? I am rather fond of her." He worked the mishmash of controls for a moment—Krieg figured he recognized more than a few things that were most certainly adapted and uniquely modified for their new purpose—before looking up at Krieg again. "Ready?" he asked. And before Krieg could answer, let alone grab hold of the railing, the Doctor threw the final lever with a rather exuberant "Allons-y!" and the ship wheezed to life, jerking and jolting and jumping ahead.

Krieg had nearly regained his balance, but when the ship shuddered to a stop, he lost it again. He stared through the grating for a moment, picking out messes of wires and countless boxes and trunks and other odds and ends in an impossibly large mirror of the top half of the ship. He wrenched his eyes away and got to his feet. The Doctor was already down by the door, so he went to join him.

"Now," the Doctor said, "let that be a lesson to you, all right? Don't touch things that you don't know anything about. You could have been stuck back there and created a paradox or otherwise managed to destroy the timeline. And, believe me, that's _never_ easy to sort out."

Krieg, who was well aware that the Doctor was telling him that that had nearly happened, asked, "How did you know where to find me? Does that fragment thing have a tracking device?"

The Doctor smirked. "Hardly. Besides, knowing _where_ to find you wasn't a problem. Knowing _when_ to find you was a bit more difficult, but I had the help of a couple of friends. Lucas had a few ideas, but Darwin helped me narrow it down."

"Darwin?" Krieg repeated.

Another grin. "Oh, yeah. Dolphins are _very_ smart. I wouldn't recommend underestimating them." And then the Doctor flung the doors to the ship wide open, ushered Krieg out into what he recognized as one of their storage rooms, and shut the doors behind him. "Right, then," the Doctor said. "On to business. I've got to have a little discussion with your captain."

The Doctor strode out of the room, and Krieg followed more slowly, glancing over his shoulder. He knew where the Doctor's ship was, but he couldn't seem to focus on it. Alien technology. Amazing, mind-boggling, physically impossible alien technology. He'd never been into all that science stuff as a kid. He was a businessman, an entrepreneur. He only knew enough science to get him by. But he could appreciate something for what it was when he saw it, could see all the possibilities of what could be done with it.

Unfortunately, he doubted the Doctor would be particularly open to a business proposition, and after the lecture he'd given him, Krieg didn't really want to ask after any other technology, either.

He'd talk with Lucas, though. The kid would love it. Heck, he might even _understand_ how something could be bigger on the inside than on the outside.

And maybe Katie wouldn't hate his guts quite as much now as she had before.

Plus, if he'd understood the Doctor correctly, he'd managed it all without destroying anything, so everything had to be good. It nearly hadn't been, but it was. He could appreciate that.

He wasn't stuck in a room that positively reeked of fish feces this time, trying to clean up the mess after one of his brilliant ideas fell through. This was certainly an improvement on that.

* * *

The Doctor knew now, having a chance to examine the fragment again, exactly what Darwin had meant. He'd said that the storm had come. It had indeed—the moment Dr. Westphalen had brought that fragment aboard _seaQuest_. And it was, as Darwin had clarified, a sand storm. Just…not the sort of sand storm humans would think of, upon hearing the term. But that's all that translation system of Lucas's had managed to come up with, and he'd been thick enough to listen to it and not Darwin's true words, though he may have had a bit of trouble with those anyhow. He didn't know all languages perfectly, after all, even with the TARDIS's help, and these sorts of concepts—they were words he should know, yes, but they weren't the sort of words that would turn up in normal, everyday conversations. Not that he tended to have normal, everyday conversations as much as he might like….

The fragment contained the storm.

Well, _storm_ was a bit of a loose term. It wasn't really a storm at all. But it was unsettled, a temporal disturbance, something that could fiercely destroy or gently refresh everything it touched, all carefully encased in a fragment.

Not that it was really a fragment.

Well, not in the sense that it was a piece of something larger of the same material.

It was part of something larger, yes, but not in the same form. And it was carefully disguised, so very carefully disguised that he had, as was intended, mistook it for what he'd assumed it to be, just as Dr. Westphalen and her people had thought it was something else that it wasn't, even though both of them had had their reservations and couldn't be certain.

It also explained why he could _feel_ it.

But it didn't explain everything. Perhaps some of those things, though, couldn't be explained. Perhaps there wasn't an explanation to be had. Maybe it truly was here by chance. But even if that were the case, something was still wrong.

He'd figure it out. He'd managed to figure out this, after all. Not as quickly as he ought to have, but, blimey, even if he _had _been travelling for over nine centuries—despite the fact that he'd recently taken to calling that vague sort of number his age, because it really wasn't, at least not insofar as he could remember, or count, since counting was difficult and really too bothersome to be troubled with—it didn't mean he'd seen everything. Even things he really should have seen before, like this.

He'd been intending to go to the bridge, but he ran into Captain Bridger just outside his quarters. "You've got news, I assume?" Bridger asked, seeing the Doctor's face.

The Doctor nodded. "Yes. Some of it's even good. I know what's going on. I know what this—" and here he pulled out the fragment from his pocket "—really is. Trouble is, I think it's released something, and it's contained in your ship. Looks like a recent activation, though; I checked. Still, shouldn't be too difficult to sort once I figure out precisely what started it, though I'm not sure if I _can_, given the nature of it all, but I've got my suspicions, and—"

"Doctor," Bridger interrupted, "can you please tell me what's going on?"

"Captain," the Doctor replied curtly, "your entire ship is infected. She's being used to incubate this—" and here the Doctor again waved around what still looked, for all the world, like a rock "—and to spread its spores." He stopped, pulling a face, and then amended, "Well, not really _spores_, because, like I'd said before, it's not biological, which is why I said _infected _and not _infested_. But it's easiest to think of them like spores."

"Think of what like spores?" Bridger asked, raising his eyebrows but keeping his voice steady.

"Everything that's contained inside that," the Doctor repeated, nodding at the fragment he held. "They're released, just a little at a time so nothing's overwhelmed, and they drift out until they find something compatible that they can latch onto. Then they can feed. Their feeding never really destroys anything. Just…skews it, slightly. A little bit changed, that's all, but everything still stands. Not usually anything to worry about at all, which is why no one notices the changes. But you do notice it if you look for it, you know. You lot just never manage to attribute it to the right thing. Not that I really blame you. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. But if you've ever found yourself remembering something differently from someone else, with different perceptions or impressions, thinking something that happened in the past was more recent or even longer ago than it is agreed that it was—that's probably a result of this feeding. You still remember what happened at the time; you just can't quite put your finger on when that time actually was."

"And you think that's what's happening here? That all of this is a result of the feeding?"

"Well, not exactly," the Doctor said, though he knew why Bridger thought that, given their previous conversation. "The result of the feeding is beneficial. Growth is the natural result, and that's what you get. It's just…the release of these spores has been accelerated, brought on, I _think_, by a future shift. Doesn't usually happen as quickly as this."

"Future shift?" Bridger repeated, looking somewhat bewildered.

The Doctor nodded. "Reverberation effect. Echoed back. Not much to worry about; just means you have an interesting future ahead of you. Well, some of you. Not all, I've noticed. The effects are more pronounced on the ones who aren't involved in everything later on. Not quite sure why yet, but I expect it's just because they're getting a double dose, unlike the rest of you who are getting it in two separate shots. Well, I say two. Might be more. Can't really tell at the moment. Doesn't always seem consistent, so it's entirely possible that some people are getting a triple dose, or even a quadruple dose, but that's getting to be highly unlikely, because I would most definitely have noticed this earlier if that were the case. Does seem to be a fair bit, though, considering it's soaking into _seaQuest_ herself and affecting her databanks. Still, nothing permanent, so you won't need to worry."

Bridger was silent for a moment. "And these spores were activated by this echo?"

"Yup," the Doctor confirmed, popping the 'p', pleased that Bridger had managed to follow him. Most people couldn't, and that was really a shame, because everything was so much easier when they paid attention and went along with him. "Thing is, because of that shift, the feeding's not regulated. It skewed all the signals. Everything's telling them that conditions are ideal, but they're not; the environment's flooded. They feed and grow and feed and grow and on and on and on until there's nothing left to feed upon, and then they start to die off. When they're spaced out—the release of the spores, I mean—that doesn't happen. Everything's safe; more than enough food to go around. But I know what you're thinking, and yes, nothing lasts indefinitely, so sometimes, eventually, they wear down naturally, wearing away until there's nothing left of them."

"That doesn't sound like spores," Bridger commented. "Would you care to pick a different analogy, Doctor?"

The Doctor sighed. "Just think of them like spores in their dispersal, then. And, oh, I don't know, bacteria or something in their build up, but you lot don't recognize them until they wear down. Erode. Become dust. Well, you lot don't call it dust. You call it sand."

Bridger crossed his arms and waited.

"This fragment of yours," the Doctor continued carefully, "is just part of the cycling process. The sand conglomerated into what you see now, this fragment, this shell, and inside that is where the spores are developed, recycled from the material that surrounds them, and released. It's a natural process, slowly recycling and renewing and restoring, completing cycles that started ages before you were born."

"Since I've never heard of anything like what you're talking about," Bridger started, looking as if he didn't really believe a word the Doctor was saying, "why don't you tell me why my lot, as you put it, calls it sand?"

Human terms. Trying to put things in human terms was never easy. They never had quite the right words for what he needed to describe, and he always had to go back to analogies that weren't quite right, didn't quite describe what was really going on. But he did what he could. He always did. Even if the descriptions weren't the best, even if they wouldn't really understand even after he had explained it, he had to try. The more they knew, the more careful they were, the less likely something would go wrong in the future. They needed to learn the consequences of these things now. He couldn't always be around to help them out, point them in the right direction.

Of course, that worked both ways. Someone might not always be around to point him in the right direction, either. But he wasn't going to make a mistake like that again.

He carried a reminder with him now, in the back of his head, and it kept calling him, but he didn't want to answer it because he knew what it meant, and he was afraid.

He didn't know what was coming out of the dark, but he knew his song was ending, that he heard it louder with each day, each hour, each _minute_ he tried to ignore it, and he knew—well, hoped—that a new one would start when—well, if—he regenerated, but he also knew that it wouldn't mean he'd forget this, any of it, from the pull of the song that compelled him to continue on to his destiny, whatever that it held, to the horror of the mistakes that could potentially be made if he forgot himself for one instant and there was no one around to save him. Or stop him.

But even though the song was echoing in his ears, even louder when he held the fragment, it wasn't yet loud enough that he couldn't ignore it, couldn't think straight, couldn't deal with the matter at hand. And he had to deal with it, because it had become contained, and it wasn't meant to be contained, and he was the only one who could release it properly, spreading it out evenly.

He could scatter the grains like a farmer would scatter seeds. But with him, it wouldn't matter where they fell. They'd take root, and they'd cycle through, keeping it all alive, keeping everything alive, just like they ought to.

The Doctor rubbed his thumb over the softer, inner material of the fragment, that was really only the oldest side of this physical manifestation, the side from which the spores, as he'd called them, came. It felt different than the other side, the harder, outer surface. The same materials made it up, but they were just realigned, sturdier. Not that the materials themselves were particularly telltale. They, too, changed. They had to. What he saw, what he felt, was different from what anyone else saw and felt. Not much, but enough, enough that he should have noticed it earlier, had it not been for that cloaking, that dulling.

He should have realized that it was something like this back when he had found the traces of the N'zyritian residue. Those silicon crystals should have degraded, broken down completely. He should never have been able to find them. If not because of the fact that they ought to have disintegrated shortly after their appearance, well within a day, then at least because everything else, including their ship, had dissipated. That may not have been in the logs, but he'd asked enough questions to know the story well enough by now, to judge approximately how long it had taken for the echo of the War to reach the ship and shake it to pieces, scattering the atomic remnants across Earth's oceans.

He'd known something had been wrong. He just hadn't been able to put his finger on what that was. But he knew, now. It was the presence of the fragment, working its influence, working its way backwards and forwards in search of sustenance to complete the processes that had been similarly affected through the feedback of a future shift, accelerating them beyond what was normal, what was safe.

Sand, he'd said, in an echo of Darwin. What the fragment contained was, by those terms, quite simply a sandstorm, one that was being released slowly, but not slowly enough. But Bridger hadn't realized what he'd meant when he'd said sand, hadn't realized its implications by that word alone. He was, undoubtedly, thinking of real sand, and that's why he was waiting for his explanation, one that he deserved and one that, the Doctor hoped, he'd understand, so that he could grasp at least some of the implications of what was happening.

"Well, not just sand, I suppose," the Doctor amended. "More like _sands_. As in—" and here he hesitated, just slightly, before slowly finishing with "—sands of time."

* * *

A/N: Just a quick thank you to everyone who's reviewed thus far; it always makes me smile.


	11. Chapter 11

"Sands of time?" Bridger repeated, raising his eyebrows. He wasn't incredulous, exactly—just cautious. "You do realize, Doctor, what that Earth expression of ours actually means? What it's truly referring to?"

The Doctor made a face at him. "Of course I do," he answered, sounding a bit defensive at the very suggestion that he wouldn't know something. "And this isn't the first time that your expressions can take on a different, considerably more literal, meaning. A stitch in time saves nine and all that. _I_ have to take that literally, even if you don't. I've had many a lecture on that, let me tell you." He sighed. "Yes, I know what your sands of time expression really means. But what's to say that nothing else was ever born out of that expression?"

"I have a feeling you'd rather tell me," Bridger said.

"Everything has its time," the Doctor began, grinning a bit as he did so, "even time itself. Have you ever wondered about those moments in your history that no one seems to know anything about? That's what happens when time can't cycle like it should, renewing itself. That time starts to die, all those moments filled with history, and it starts to break down and decay until there's hardly a sign of what happened once upon a time oh so long ago."

"Or perhaps," Bridger suggested, "we simply haven't gathered enough archaeological evidence to piece together what we know."

"Oh," the Doctor said, sounding a bit disgusted, "_please_ don't talk to me about archaeologists. Waste of time, if you ask me, to have them spend all their time digging in the dirt as if they could unearth something from time immemorial that's long been lost in the mists of time, hoping that whatever it is has withstood the test of time, when they could be doing something useful to pass the time of day, especially considering that they're not even right half the time, but I suppose their thinking is that there's no time like the present, that time's of the essence, since time and tide wait for no man, and that if the time's ripe for it, they've no time to lose."

"Doctor," Bridger started, letting a touch of exasperation colour his tone, "I get your point. We have a lot of time related expressions in English. But would you mind telling me why this one in particular is pertinent at this time?"

The Doctor grinned. "It's high time that I got to the point, is it?" Bridger just looked at him, and the Doctor gave a small shrug. "Sorry. Couldn't resist. Though I do have a bit of a laugh whenever I come across archaeologists, being a time traveller and all. They usually are wrong. Well, most of the time."

"Doctor—"

"Sorry. Wasn't intentional that time, though. Just sort of slipped in. Mostly because that wasn't _really_ an expression. But, yes, I see your point, time's a-wasting, and— Sorry! Really didn't mean to…. Well, maybe a little bit…." The Doctor trailed off and shook his head. "Anyway. Point is, time passes through cycles, like everything else. It restores itself, renews itself, sort of like water when it goes through the water cycle, and that way it can carry on. What we're passing through right now is fresh. New growth, scripting itself into history. And this fragment helps to allow that. It's just one stage in the cycle."

"But time isn't physically sand," Bridger protested, "and that's what it sounds like you're trying to tell me."

The Doctor opened his mouth, but it was still a few seconds before he said anything. "No," he finally agreed. "Time itself isn't physically sand, or dust, or any of that. But this _is_ a physical manifestation of time. Bit complicated, granted, but essentially, this fragment contains time. It exists because it acts like a magnet, attracting things to it to create this shell, a physical barrier to protect itself."

"Against what?" Bridger asked. "The rest of time?"

The Doctor looked relieved that he'd made that last assertion, because a few seconds before he'd looked quite alarmed. "Yes, exactly," he confirmed. "And to protect the rest of time from it. It works both ways."

Bridger figured there was no point in hiding his doubts. The situation couldn't make any less sense, after all. He nodded at the fragment. "So if the time contained in that acts as a magnet, it would attract things that are opposite to it, yes? What's the opposite of time, then?"

The Doctor laughed. "Now's not the time for _that_ discussion," he said, instead of answering the question. "Particularly because time for you lot is still just a widely accepted but completely misguided concept, at least in terms of your understanding of its true nature. Suffice to say that what it attracts is never the same thing twice and that it's always shifting, because what it attracts depends on which particular moments are cycling and what occurred within those moments. But, you see, the reason I could sense this fragment, could feel it, and none of the rest of you could, is because I've _been_ through time more times than you could count. I'm saturated in it. More years have soaked into me than I've lived, I'd wager, and that's saying something. It's not just been a few trips through time for me, or even a few years of that travelling, like it has been for some of my companions. That wouldn't be enough for them to feel this. I've been in this time and in pieces of the same time cycling through other universes. I've been outside of time. I've even held the key to it in my own hands. I understand it. I can see it. And I am clearly too alike to be considered neutral by that fragment. It's trying to repel me. Must think I meddle too much for my own good."

There were some things, Bridger knew, that just had to be accepted, no matter how weird or wonderful they were. The Doctor, with all his ideas, was apparently one of those things. "All right," Bridger agreed. "If this fragment is causing the problem because this cycling process is moving too quickly, causing this feeding of yours, how do we fix it?"

The Doctor hesitated. "I'm not...entirely sure," he admitted, looking a bit sheepish.

"You don't know?"

"Well, the thing is, it looks like it's been accelerated by a future shift. I can't prevent that, not now that it's started and I'm involved. I have to let it stand."

"But can't you just slow it down?" Bridger asked. "I don't know; couldn't you interfere with the signals it's receiving?"

Again the Doctor shook his head. "They're already here. Always have been, echoing back. I don't know what that particular future shift is going to be, but I'll bet someone was doing something they shouldn't've been. Rather hard to say, though. The signal's here, but it's buried now. Like whatever needed to happen did, and it's no longer needed, because the future's going to be changed the way the person, or machine, or whatever it was that sent the signal _wanted_ things to be changed, but the signal still had to be sent for it to happen in the first place, so—" The Doctor broke off, clearly having caught sight of Bridger's face. "It's complicated, like I said. Time has layers, and they keep moving about. All you lot ever know is the top layer, or the one beneath it if you're ever involved in something that might have been or once was, providing you happen to remember it."

"So have you any ideas at all?" Bridger queried.

The Doctor stared off to one side for a moment, lost in his own thoughts. Then he said, "I might. But I want to talk to Dr. Westphalen first. I need to know how long it's been at this to judge the effects. Even then I may not have the clearest idea, though."

"Anything is better than nothing," Bridger reminded him. "I can't have everyone on board my ship—" He stopped, realizing something. "If this fragment's been releasing these spores all along, then it's not just the crew on board now that's affected by it, is it? Everyone else would be, too. Everyone we sent topside."

"Initially, yes," the Doctor said. "But things had only just reached the saturation point when I arrived, I think. Even threw me off for a minute there, to be perfectly honest. But things are compounding inside your vessel, Captain, building up and increasing in concentration. The people who were sent up to the surface vessels would have been taken out of the system. Up there, on the surface, it's open. Things will have dispersed. They ought to be fine. Even the people down here will recover their sense of when things happened once equilibrium is reinstated, though I'll have to do something to make sure it's the _right_ equilibrium. Wouldn't want everyone to have their dates off, now would we?"

Bridger wasn't fooled by the Doctor's light-hearted tone or the grin on his face. "And can you do something? Make it so that things go back to the way they were, before any of this started? Before we were affected by this time distortion?" he asked.

The Doctor's grin faltered slightly. "Well, I should be able to," he said. "You won't need to worry about it."

"But do you?" Bridger pressed. If what the Doctor was saying was at all true, then of course he, being caught up in everything with the rest of the humans on his ship, wouldn't need to worry about anything; he'd never know the difference, not really, not unless he compared notes with someone who had been sent topside, someone who hadn't been significantly touched by this…feeding, or whatever it was.

The Doctor wasn't grinning anymore. "I always have to worry," he replied quietly. "If nothing else, it's safer that way. Won't forget myself."

The reply wasn't one Bridger particularly liked, although he appreciated the Doctor's honesty. From the sounds of it, the last time the Doctor had 'forgotten himself', things hadn't gone so well. He'd survived, but from the look on his face as he'd said that, Bridger wasn't so sure everyone else had.

"I'm trusting you to do your best, Doctor," Bridger reminded him. "We all are."

The Doctor gave him a small smile. "I know. I won't let you down."

"No," Bridger agreed, but with just the two of them present, he wasn't pretending to be as bright and chipper as the Doctor kept trying to be. He remembered the Doctor's earlier words, from their last discussion of trust. He accepted them, and he understood them, but it didn't mean he had to like them. "Not unless you have to."

* * *

Keller found Dr. Westphalen in the med bay. She didn't look like she was doing much of anything at the moment, really. She was staring down at a handkerchief, lost in thought. He called her name, twice, and she looked up at him, shaking her head and smiling. "Sorry," she said. "I was just…thinking."

"Penny for your thoughts," Keller quipped.

"It's something the Doctor said," Dr. Westphalen admitted. "I'm trying to figure out if he could really be right."

That certainly piqued Keller's interest. "What did he say?"

"From what I gathered," Dr. Westphalen answered, "he informed me that I'm not remembering things quite right."

"He actually said that?"

Dr. Westphalen gave a small shrug. "He told me that the story is the same, but the timing isn't. That I'm not remembering when things happened correctly." She picked up the handkerchief and showed it to him. "Sand," she said. "From our last alien encounter." She bit her lip. "When was that?"

Keller chuckled. "Five and a half weeks ago. I'm not liable to forget something like that."

Dr. Westphalen's face blanched. After a moment, she said, softly, "Apparently I am." After a moment, she added, "I thought that was three weeks ago."

For a moment, Keller wanted to correct her, but he held back. Even though he knew she was wrong, her proposed time—three weeks—seemed much more right than his remembered five and a half, particularly now that she'd said it and he'd had a chance to think. Maybe he was the one remembering things wrong, not her. It wouldn't be the first time he'd lost track of things. If he hadn't been keeping such strict count on his mission to Mars and back, he wouldn't have had the faintest how much time had passed, not once the days had blended together. And that wasn't that terribly long ago, was it? Since he'd returned? Two months? No, must be longer than that. That was much too short. Six months back would be a more likely guess. Maybe even seven. But surely….

No, no, that wasn't right, none of it.

All of it felt right, as if it should be right, but it couldn't be; it was preposterous.

Five and a half weeks ago, he'd said. Why would he say a thing like that? The notion that he could be wrong hadn't occurred to him before, but now that Dr. Westphalen had put forth another date, proposed another time, he realized that very well could be wrong. He probably was.

It was five months back, maybe, that he'd returned from Mars. Or possibly five and a half. Perhaps that's why he'd been thinking five and a half weeks; he'd been mixing his months and weeks. Not something he'd done before, but, as he and Nathan teasingly reminded each other, they were getting on in their years.

"No," Keller found himself saying. "No, no, now that you say it, I think three weeks sounds about right."

Dr. Westphalen twisted her mouth into some semblance of a smile. "Yes," she agreed dully. "I found myself thinking much the same when Dr. Levin informed me that it had been no less than six weeks ago. Of course, he'd had to correct himself from seven weeks first. Claims he can't remember properly, but he seemed fairly certain that six was right. Well, once we'd established that it hadn't been eight."

"Then it's more than just us?" Keller asked, realizing with a sinking feeling that he was clearly no less affected by whatever this was than she.

Dr. Westphalen nodded. "Everyone I've asked so far. Not one of the medical staff has given me the same date twice. I don't know what to make of it. It seems the Doctor's right, but I don't know how he possibly could be. I don't understand it. How can we all have such different ideas in our heads, so easily influenced by one musing or another? It doesn't make sense. And it—" She broke off, shaking her head. "It's frustrating."

Keller didn't consider himself to be an apt reader of people's feelings, but he was good enough at it to know that Dr. Westphalen felt more than just frustrated. She sounded like she felt guilty. "Do you think this is your fault?" he asked carefully.

Dr. Westphalen attempted another smile, but was no more successful than the last time. That, as far as Keller was concerned, told of how horrible she was really feeling; she couldn't even pretend otherwise, though that wasn't for lack of trying. "I think I brought this upon us, yes," she admitted. "That meteorite fragment I found. Or whatever it really is. The Doctor seems to think it's the cause of all this."

Keller thought for a moment. "He called it a TIR," he recalled. "Temporal something or other."

"Oh, he'd told me that, too," Dr. Westphalen replied, "but he followed it up by saying it didn't make sense, that it couldn't be that. So I'm inclined to think that it isn't. But I can't possibly think of what it could really be. Certainly nothing I've heard of. Not likely anything any one of us has heard of." She stopped. "I thought I'd picked that up for curiosity's sake. Now I really have to wonder. If I can't trust my memory, what else can't I trust? Has that dratted thing affected anything besides our sense of how time has passed?"

She was right. They hadn't even noticed that this had been happening, not until the Doctor had pointed it out to them. He wouldn't have realized for quite some time, he was sure, if Dr. Westphalen had not presented him with all the evidence she'd gathered. He wasn't even convinced that he would have noticed at all, if he was perfectly honest. Nothing felt wrong. Nothing twigged at his memory, or refused to sit right, or anything like that. It all felt perfectly natural. Right. Like it was exactly as it should be, as it had always been.

And if that certainty could be blatantly false, what else was?

* * *

The Doctor found Dr. Westphalen with Commander Keller in the science lab—or med bay, as they called it. He really ought to remember to start calling it that. Wouldn't do to cause confusion. Not that things could get much more confusing from their point of view, anyway, if they'd started to realize what was going on. And…he thought they were. Realizing, and starting to understand, that is. Judging by the silent reception he received, at least. The stares. They told him so much, those stares. They told of fear, and they told of accusation, and they told of hope.

Not confusion, though.

They finally understood.

That was good. It should make things easier.

Well, marginally easier.

"You know what's happening," he said, watching them carefully. "You've worked it out."

Dr. Westphalen tried to give me a small smile in response. "It's as you said, Doctor. The timing's off."

The Doctor glanced at Keller. "You've noticed it too, then?"

The man nodded. "Once Dr. Westphalen pointed it out to me, yes. But I don't see how it can be happening."

"It's time," the Doctor explained. "That fragment you found. It's not a TIR at all. It's time itself."

"Time's just a concept," Dr. Westphalen replied softly. "That's all the more clear now."

"Maybe for you lot, yes, but it's not really," the Doctor said. He went on to explain about the sands of time, and the cycling process, and how the time itself was seeping from the fragment, carried off like airborne spores, and how the feeding and growth that resulted was skewing their perceptions of the past because _seaQuest_ was acting like a closed system, keeping everything in.

More silence. Perhaps he ought to have gone a bit slower.

"It's normally all right," he added. "Out there, the spores can just go off, feeding off past and present to grow the future. It's just been building up in here, becoming too concentrated. It'll be all right if you head to the surface and open the hatches for a while. You just need to release them. They'll go; concentration gradients and all that. It's just simple diffusion."

"So I did cause this, then," Dr. Westphalen finally said. "When I brought that on board." She glanced away, and the Doctor knew she felt terribly guilty, that she blamed herself.

"Kristin," he called gently, "Kristin, look at me, all right?" She reluctantly met his gaze. "It's not your fault," he stated, as clearly as he could.

"I brought the fragment here. Of course it's my fault."

"You didn't just pick it up for curiosity's sake," the Doctor told her softly.

Dr. Westphalen laughed. "Perhaps I did; perhaps I didn't. It doesn't really matter. I still brought it in the end."

"It _does_ matter," the Doctor insisted. "And, like I said, it wasn't just curiosity's sake. Now, it didn't seek you out, exactly. But it called to you. Well, it called to everyone, actually. It needed to be moved. It had remained in one place for long enough, and the environment wasn't conducive to it anymore. Well, not as much as it could be. The fact that you found it was a coincidence. Well, not exactly, but sort of. It didn't have to be you who found it; anyone could have, the way it was calling. It's more, well, let's say you're a bit more receptive to it, given what you've been exposed to, so it pulled you in. Ergo, it wasn't _purely_ coincidental. Just…partially coincidental. You just happened to be the first person with the right, well, qualifications, to come along."

"Then this all could have been prevented?" Dr. Westphalen asked. "If I'd never gone there in the first place, never found that fragment?"

The Doctor pulled a face. "I'm…not so sure about that, actually," he admitted. "Not now, at any rate."

"But if she hadn't gone," Keller pointed out, "she wouldn't have been able to hear the call or whatever it was."

The Doctor shook his head. "It's deeper than that," he persisted. "Normally, all the time contained within the fragment does is cycle to its renewal, growing and spreading. But I think it rooted itself in you, Kristin Westphalen. And as it's been growing out, it's been growing into your past, changing things."

"What?"

"It's been influencing you, tweaking your past experiences, shaping you. It's trying to turn you into an active carrier. Having a time doing it, too, considering it has needed to alter other small things to centre them on you." The Doctor blew out a breath. "Not its fault, of course. It's been stuck in the same place for thousands upon thousands of years. No wonder it wants to move. Time doesn't like being forced to stand still, not when it's meant to flow."

"What do you mean, it's been influencing her?" Keller demanded. Dr. Westphalen herself still looked too shocked to comment.

The Doctor stared at Dr. Westphalen. "You've been touched by something before this," he said. "It's there, around you. Traces of…something. I'm not sure what. But you've been touched by the past before. Haven't you?"

Dr. Westphalen shook her head in denial, and then she stopped, thinking over his words again. Her lips formed a small 'o' as she remembered something. "Maybe I have been," she conceded softly. She took a few breaths. "I don't know how long ago it was, especially not now, but we found the shipwreck of the _King George_."

"The _King George_?" the Doctor repeated, trying to place the reference. So many ships had been lost in Earth's history, but the way Dr. Westphalen had said it, this one was apparently one of the memorable ones—meaning he ought to know it. "_King George_, _King George_…. Oh! The _George_! Right! 1913, wasn't it? Just started sinking? Sabotage, I thought. Never did look into it."

Dr. Westphalen nodded. "The captain sunk his own ship."

"Why would he do that?" the Doctor asked, scrunching his brow up as he tried to puzzle out the reasoning.

"In hopes that the woman he loved would love him in return."

The Doctor made a face. "And how is that supposed to work? Last I checked, the human race tended to favour survival. I don't see why any woman would love a man who tried to kill her." He paused. "Then again, Stockholm syndrome. You don't expect victims to defend their kidnappers, either."

Dr. Westphalen laughed—a true laugh. Evidently she found his confusion amusing. But he didn't mind, really; anything to bring her out of her black mood. "She was in love with an engineer," Dr. Westphalen explained. "The captain hoped to frame the man. But it went wrong, and the ship went down with all three of them, and a few stowaways, on board. He'd never intended that, never wanted it."

Made sense. Explained why the ship had sunk—sabotage, like he'd expected. But— "Hang on," the Doctor said. "How do you know that?"

Dr. Westphalen glanced at Keller, who clearly was curious to know the answer as well. She took a deep breath, then admitted, "The captain told me. And, according to the others…. Because it's not very clear for me, really, and when I did come back to myself, the air was bad and we had to…." She trailed off, shaking her head. "The woman, Lillian. Her ghost—" and here Dr. Westphalen hesitated again, as if she couldn't quite bring herself to finish "—possessed me."

"What?" Keller stared at her, as if he couldn't believe what she was saying.

But to the Doctor, it did make sense. There were plenty of things that masqueraded as ghosts—Gelth, Sydrils, Cybermen who were trying to break through from a parallel universe, that sort of thing—but there were actual ghosts about, too. Well, he said ghosts. Generally, they were just manifestations of consciousness, a lasting impression of a human—at least in this case—that once was, clinging on with whatever they could. Always had a reason, though. They never stuck around without a reason. Last one he'd run into thought he'd been cursed. Ancient runes or rhymes or some such nonsense. Wasn't really, of course, but belief was a strong thing.

So was guilt.

And he'd bet guilt was the guilty culprit here.

"You were touched by a time over a hundred years past," the Doctor murmured. "That's ages of traces left on you. All that time. All those minutes. No wonder it thinks you can be a carrier. It thinks you can travel in time." A slow grin spread over his face. "That's brilliant."

Keller, apparently, disagreed. "That's horrible!"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, it's not. I mean, time doesn't want to hurt anyone. It's not out to get you. It just needs a bit of help. It thought you could help it, that's all. Shame it was mistaken, though; doesn't like me, not now that it's chosen you." He paused. "Of course, if that's true, then it's not quite as random as I'd thought. You being the one to pick it up, I mean. It must've been shaping you for years, retrospectively planting all those interests in you, getting you to the right place at the right time."

"But…." Dr. Westphalen shook her head, unable to grasp what he was saying and looking alarmed at the implications of it all. "How can you say that it's had enough time to influence me?"

"It's been sitting," the Doctor said carefully, "in your quarters for weeks. Even if you don't remember all of it, that's plenty of time."

"But even if that's true, that was after I'd picked it up. How can you say it's the reason that I've spent _years_—"

"But that's the thing," the Doctor interrupted. "You haven't. Not really. It's been changing things. It's trying to rewrite your past. And I won't let it."

"But if I'd never had any interest in this in the first place, how would I have ended up with it?" Dr. Westphalen challenged, genuinely curious and more than a bit worried.

"Oh, loads of ways," the Doctor said. "Maybe a friend asked for an opinion, or just thought you'd be interested, or perhaps you were curious about something else and came across it. Something like that. But once it had your imprint, it latched onto you, because it recognized the traces of the past on you, traces of a time that you ordinarily could never have experienced. And once it did, things started to change. Time doesn't usually rewrite itself, but it isn't normally looking for a carrier, either. Things must have been getting stale, like I'd said. Well, not stale. Barren. Too much unchanged for too long. Thrives on changes, you see. Speeds the cycling process. Tends to go dormant otherwise."

"So how do you propose to reverse this?" Keller asked sceptically.

The Doctor hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and said, "Oh, I'll think of something."

But from the way they were looking at him, he knew he hadn't been very convincing.

* * *

A/N: Thanks to those who take the time to review, and I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter holiday.


	12. Chapter 12

The Doctor knew that he could always destroy the fragment.

But it would be a bit difficult to do that without destroying everything within it.

From what he could see, though, he didn't have any other choice.

There _ought_ to be a way to just break it open, releasing what's inside. The environment now was saturated with all those spores. Supersaturated, even. If he flooded it, threw in just one too many, that ought to push it just too far, abruptly bringing everything _out_ of solution. Well, all the extraneous bits, at least. The crystals would form around the distortions. Everything else, what originally had happened, all the initial dates and perceptions, would reassert themselves and override the assumptions. Then, all he'd have to do would be to go around and collect all the crystals, all the sand, and dispose of it.

Except that made it sound all so easy, and it wasn't, not at all. Not now that things had become mirrored. Because of that, what originally had happened couldn't always be recovered. He wouldn't just be taking away impurities—he'd be taking away some of the pure history, plain and simple. What worried him was that there was no way of telling which moments would stick to the impurities and become lost. There wasn't any way to differentiate them, causing some things to adsorb while letting others slip free. It would just be left up to chance.

The Doctor noticed Darwin watching him from one of the passages—what had Lucas called them? Aquatubes?—that allowed him access to the vast majority of the ship. "This may give a whole new meaning to 'sand storm', you know," he commented. The dolphin clicked a response, and then swam forward. "Oi!" the Doctor exclaimed, making a face as he started to follow him. "You don't have to give me an 'I told you so' even if you were right all along."

He was being led back to the moon pool, he realized. Very well. He wasn't sure if he would win the argument, but he'd give it a good shot. It was hard to defend yourself when your opponent had the ability to swim ahead of you and pretend to ignore every word that came out of your mouth.

But winning an argument, the Doctor soon realized, wasn't on the dolphin's agenda—well, that, or Darwin figured he'd already won and put the matter behind him. The Doctor wasn't quite sure. Either way, it seemed he was supposed to explain to someone _else_ what was going on. It was getting bothersome, having to explain himself so many times without actually being able to _do_ what he kept saying he needed to.

That way, however, ensured that he thought things through. _Really_ thought them through, not just acted on years of pent-up emotion and half-formed thoughts.

Not like—

The Doctor forced a smile onto his face as he looked at Lucas. "Remember when I was asking you about time?" he asked. The boy nodded, and the Doctor showed him the fragment. "This is it."

"What?"

"This," the Doctor said, very clearly, "is time. A form of it, in a physical shell it generated. And what I need to do is break that shell."

"And what happens then?"

"Well, we get the sand storm Darwin was talking about all along, for one. And once that's cleaned up, or just before, or around about then, Captain Bridger takes _seaQuest_ straight to the surface and opens the hatches to let everything else diffuse out, and then you can pick up the rest of the crew and I'll be on the way."

"In your ship?" Lucas asked. At the Doctor's look, he added, "Krieg told me, before he went to talk to Commander Hitchcock. He said your ship is bigger on the inside, and that it just looks like a box, like one of those old telephone booths they used to have, and that's how you got it on board without anyone noticing."

"Well, that's one reason I managed that, yes," the Doctor said. "But I'm not here to discuss my transport. I—"

"Can I see it?"

The Doctor opened his mouth, but for a moment he couldn't reply. There was really no reason _not_ to let him see it. Just…he'd probably ask for a trip, then, and he couldn't do that. He still needed to double check his history, but he was fairly certain that _seaQuest_—or at least the next version of her, since this one unfortunately but unavoidably was going to be destroyed shortly before she was due to return to port—was going to be experiencing something like this in her future. Well, not like _this_, specifically, but…. That future shift had been a temporal one, and he thought there could even have been another echo or two behind it, and he didn't want to mistakenly _change_ any of that. And Lucas…. Lucas had stayed on _seaQuest_, even eventually signed up and became Ensign Wolenczak to stay aboard her. He remembered that. And to make sure that the youth came out of whatever those future shifts threw at him unscathed, it would be safer for him if he was untouched by time travel before then.

It was different with Krieg. Lieutenant Benjamin Krieg only had served on _seaQuest_'s first tour. They'd run into their fair share of the inexplicable, but it was nothing compared to what they'd be facing in the future, not if he was reading things right.

But Lucas's curiosity was genuine, and he didn't mean anything by it, and he had no idea what his future held. "All right," the Doctor agreed, "but not yet. I need to break this first."

Lucas read his expression. "What's so hard about that?"

"It's not meant to _be_ broken," the Doctor explained. "This shell it generated for itself—it's meant to hold until everything within is through cycling. It's tougher than it looks. It's not like I can just take a hammer to it."

"So what can break it?"

The Doctor grimaced. "That's the trouble. I'm not sure." Worse still, it was active, still receiving signals to speed the cycling process as if it were releasing its spores into a bountiful environment, not an overburdened one. That constant feeling he'd had since he'd come had been magnified by all those spores, which was why he'd hadn't been able to find its centre, its source, until Dr. Westphalen had handed it to him. But even a few blasts with the sonic screwdriver wouldn't be enough to alter these signals. He couldn't shut them off or scatter them or anything. It was the wrong kind of signal for that.

Lucas took the fragment from him and turned it over in his hands. "Diamond's hard," he said. He scratched at the older, softer surface. "More so than this."

The Doctor shook his head. "I don't think any physical means is going to work."

"So even shooting it into a hydrothermal vent wouldn't melt it, you mean?"

"Unlikely. Its protection spans more than three dimensions, you know." He took the fragment back, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and aiming it at the fragment to prove his point. Not that he really expected Lucas to hear the same changes in its pitch as he did, but he had rather hoped that something might have changed with the readings now that he really knew what he was dealing with. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be the case. At least, not where it mattered.

"Then why ask me what can break it if it's not something I'm going to know?" Lucas asked when he'd finished and pocketed the sonic screwdriver again.

The Doctor refrained from pointing out that, in actuality, Lucas had asked _him_, not the other way around. "Because you're clever," he answered. "Like me, you make connections other people wouldn't think to make."

"Maybe so," Lucas countered, though he was smiling at the compliment, "but you made your point earlier, when you were saying how I know nothing about time."

The Doctor grinned. "Precisely. You know nothing about it. I know quite a lot about it. Between the two of us, we ought to come up with something, shouldn't we?"

Lucas stared at him for a moment. "You didn't know I'd be here," he said after a moment. "You just wanted to talk to Darwin again, didn't you?"

"Dolphins have a different sense of time than either of us," the Doctor reminded him. "He might know about the temporal saturation that's occurred, and how it's skewing all your perceptions and extrapolating your assumptions into basic changes, building up to the point that it's even mucking about with the ship's computers, but I don't think he'll be able to tell me how to destroy this."

"Maybe you can't," Lucas said. "Maybe someone else has to."

"Perhaps," the Doctor agreed, although he didn't think it very likely, "but we won't know until we figure out how to break it open, now will we?"

"But how are you supposed to break time? It's not physical, and even the shell that _is_ physical can't be broken by physical means, you said, so how is it even supposed to be possible?"

"Time can crack," the Doctor told him. "It's just not common, and generally not good. Something's gone wrong if the timeline cracks, and I ought to know."

"So what can cause it to crack? Can we use that, and force it to crack this?"

"To get the sort of crack we want," the Doctor said, "something very bad would have to happen. And generally, at least with me, when something very bad happens, I don't have a lot of luck controlling it, so I do _not_ want to try when the environment's this sensitive to changes."

"You're not being very helpful," Lucas groused.

The Doctor sighed, and handed him the fragment back. "Maybe hold this for a while again. It's a bit difficult for me to think around that."

"Because of that force you feel, yeah, I remember," Lucas said, taking it.

"Repulsion, really," the Doctor commented. "Like magnets. Opposite poles attract, and like—"

"Yeah, I know. Like poles repel," Lucas said, smirking. "I'm not five."

"Like poles repel," the Doctor slowly repeated. "Like _magnets_."

"You just said that."

"Like a _magnet_," the Doctor said again. He grinned. "That's it!"

"What?"

"It's like a magnet," the Doctor told him. "Its strength is coming from its integrity, which is powered by its attraction and repulsion of everything around it. If we disable that, if we demagnetize it, it _will_ be easy to break open. Well, easier, at any rate." He grinned again. "So how do we demagnetize a magnet?"

"Well, if we can't heat it up or break it down or something like that because it's physically protected…." Lucas thought for a moment. "Would an alternating current work? Using an electromagnet, I mean?"

The Doctor beamed at him. "That's right. It's similar enough, or will be with a few special modifications of mine, so it'll work the same. We'll be able to weaken this, slowly, by reversing its polarity. And re-reversing the polarity. And re-re-reversing its—"

"Okay, okay, I get it." Lucas chuckled. "I've got some odds and ends in my room that we can probably make into what we need. Let's go. But you're explaining all those modifications of yours, okay?"

The Doctor frowned, but realized he may not win the argument, and he really shouldn't take the time to have an argument in the first place, even if it was all in fun. "Fine," he agreed, "but I'm not going to promise that you will understand it. And don't argue with me, because some things you won't, no matter how clever you think you are."

Lucas grinned at him, and the Doctor suddenly wondered if the teenager had managed to trick him into that particular mindset. "We'll see," was the smug reply.

* * *

Less than an hour later, the Doctor, nearly free of his headache—he wouldn't be rid of it entirely until the fragment was broken open—was holding the demagnetized fragment. Well, mostly demagnetized, since it wasn't possible to _completely_ demagnetize it. Not that demagnetized really was the right word for it, but neither would it be correct to call it detemporalized, so he decided to stick with the analogy in his explanation to Captain Bridger.

He'd be able to break it now, but before he did that, he had to make sure the captain knew the consequences.

"I know what I need to do to sort this out," the Doctor said. He showed Bridger the fragment again, even though it didn't look any different. He recounted what he had discussed with Dr. Westphalen, then explained what he and Lucas had done, and why, and what that allowed him to do.

"What's the drawback?" Bridger asked, crossing his arms. They were back in his quarters, away from listening ears, and the Doctor had a feeling that he wanted him to be frank. "There has to be a drawback to breaking that fragment open or you wouldn't be telling me this. You would have already done it."

The Doctor sighed; of course Bridger would see right through it all, cutting straight to the point. "It's stored all those moments," he answered, "and I don't know what'll happen to them once I break this. I don't expect they'll revert to the way they were originally; I'll be releasing raw time, not rewinding what's already here. But I can't guarantee that what it changed will stay changed. Some things will, I expect, since some became mirrored, but with others, well, others might still be rewritten. That's part of the recycling process, after all. Not noticeably, though, not to you. The end results would remain the same. But, the means—the _means_ would change, and that could change other things in your future. Choices, decisions, thoughts, feelings—they're all subject to it, to this change." He hesitated, then added, "And, thing is, I have to break this here, so all those moments aren't just lost. And once I do, everyone within range—roughly about a ten mile radius from the centre, I imagine—will be affected by this. Not much. But…."

"But what, Doctor?" Bridger asked, raising his eyebrows in a way that told the Doctor, quite clearly, that he wanted a full explanation.

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, looking a bit sheepish. "But things may not be as…_straightforward_ as they've been before," he admitted. "I mean, they will be at first. These next few weeks of yours will be extraordinarily straightforward. Well, straightforward in the sense that nothing like this'll be happening, that everything will follow logic and rules and have a pattern to be found if you look for it, even if it's not easy. After that, though, it'll be different. Just a bit. You lot will be more susceptible to things of this nature, things that don't necessarily make sense or add up or follow the rules you expect them to. It won't be obvious. It'll just slowly build up, more and more, and it'll be something you realize once you look back at it all and are trying to find a point where things changed. This would be that point, the point when you started attracting things that are neutral to everyone else." He paused. "I mean, sure, you _could_ chalk it up to other things. I expect you will, unless you remember this quite well. _SeaQuest _herself is bound to attract all sorts of odd things, isn't she? It's your position, your job, the fact that you're first on the scene or that it's your responsibility. But it'll also be because of who you are and what you've come in contact with and how you've dealt with everything that's come before, this included."

"So you think this may have _caused_ that future shift you keep talking about that's affecting it in the first place?"

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, you _are_ a clever one, aren't you? Yes. It's quite possible. I can't say for certain, but it's likely."

"But wouldn't that mean—?"

"One is happening in response to the other, in both directions. Yes. It's a bit complicated."

"But once you break the fragment, all we'll have to do is take her up the surface for a while?"

"To let the spores diffuse out, yes," the Doctor confirmed, nodding. "And, well, there's also cleaning up whatever crystallizes down here."

"And what happens in the moment that you break that fragment open?"

The Doctor blew out a breath. "Well, to be perfectly honest, I'd be surprised if you feel so much as a ripple."

"How's it going to affect you?"

The Doctor looked mildly surprised by the question. "Ooh, it'll be a bit more noticeable for me. I've been through worse, though. Might be a minute or so before my head clears again and things are all in order and I'm not seeing everything at once—that _does_ give you a headache. Trust me on that. Normally I can ignore it, or just keep it down to two—two possibilities at once isn't bad, really, especially in comparison—but not when things are changing like that. Well, there are other times I can't block it out either, but _most _of the time I can push it back unless I specifically look, which I don't really like to do unless I have to. Has the potential to spoil things. And, the headache. Plus, it's all possibilities, and probabilities as to how probable those possibilities actually are, and—" The Doctor stopped. "Sorry. Suffice to say that, after a minute or two, I'll be right as rain. Why?"

Bridger opened his mouth, as if he were going to say something else, and then shook his head. All he said in reply was, "You don't have to be here when it's broken if it incapacitates you, even temporarily."

The Doctor smiled. "Thanks," he said. "But I do, actually. I have to be the one to break it. It'll yield more readily to me, you see, because of who and what I am. If someone strikes it with a poor stroke and it's not a clean break, then we can't control how things are released, and the more control we have, the better. I just want a small crack, not a large one. I don't need to empty everything that's inside of this. I just need to let it out a bit in a rush, to trigger all the extraneous bits to come out of solution. Then I can seal the crack, and clean up all the crystals here, and scatter those and the fragment. Then, the cycling can start again, like it should be. Slow and steady and regulated, by its established equilibrium and by feedback and feedforward processes and everything else."

Bridger nodded. "All right, then," he said. "Go on. Break it."

"Now?" the Doctor asked, slightly taken aback.

"We've no reason to wait."

"You don't want to…warn anyone? About anything? That you're planning to surface, even?" The Doctor scratched his head. "You lot always seem to have so many last minute things to do, that's all. Never enough time for them all to get done, but—"

"I relayed a message to the surface vessels earlier. I told them you were conducting a few experiments, trying to see if you could garner any more information out of us. Jog our memory—that sort of thing. They'll be ready for anything. Half the military folk seem to think all you scientific people are crazy. Especially you, when most of them don't even know what you're really doing. But I can have O'Neill relay a message now, if you like."

"Might be best," the Doctor agreed. "We're less likely to be shot at if we surprise them. I don't like getting shot at, and it happens a lot. Wouldn't want them to start thinking I managed to overpower you or some such thing, ordering you to do this and that."

Bridger chuckled. "You're used to people being suspicious of you, I see. But not everyone on this planet shoots first and asks questions later, Doctor. _SeaQuest_ is a peacekeeping vessel and for scientific research, but we've had scrapes of our own to remind us why we're mixing science with the military, so all of the crew are quick and good at thinking on their feet. One man would be hard pressed to get the better of all of us."

"But not impossible," the Doctor reminded him. "Not everyone plays fair."

"You read about our experience with Dr. Zellar, I take it." Bridger looked weary for a moment. "Kristin hasn't played a game of chess since, and she was quite good at it."

"Was she?" the Doctor asked. "Shame, then. I would have loved a good game."

"She's taken up poker," Bridger informed him with a smile.

"Poker?" the Doctor repeated. "Really? Wouldn't've pegged her for that. I like poker, though. Haven't played it since, oh…. I'm not really sure I remember exactly when it was now. There was that illicit game in that one hospital unit during the Korean War that I crashed…." He grinned. "They didn't seem to mind. Well, not until I started winning."

Bridger smiled again and shook his head. "You must get around, then. But before we find ourselves back there or caught up in World War III or shunted back to the Cuban Missile Crisis or whatever can happen if those spores of yours keep feeding, you'd better get whatever you need to break it open. Where's the best place to do that?"

"You know, I'm not really sure. By now, the concentration throughout the ship is probably about the same. It likely doesn't matter, but to be on the safe side, I think I'll nip back to Dr. Westphalen's quarters, if you don't mind. If things _haven't_ dispersed, that ought to have the highest concentration; it was there for the longest period of time."

"Will you have everything you need in five minutes?" Bridger asked.

"I have everything I need now," the Doctor replied with a grin. "But five minutes it is, just to be on the safe side."

"And you're certain this will work?" Bridger pressed.

"_Well_," the Doctor started, drawing the word out, "nothing's _really_ certain. But I think we've got a good chance this time."

The Doctor grinned, and then left the captain to his own devices. He wasn't exactly sure what Bridger intended to tell everyone, or how he planned to pull it all off as if there were nothing of concern happening on board. _He_ ought to be thinking about what he was going to say about his lack of report, but he was sure that once they found out that his records had mysteriously disappeared from the world database—he'd needed to go back and make sure they had some, however falsified, before he started pestering the UEO, since he just knew they'd be checking into him—they would be more worried about tracking him down and their lack of success in that particular venture than they would be about anything he might have had to say about the N'zyritian ship.

Besides, it wasn't as if he'd ever really intended to _give_ them a report anyway.

No matter. Captain Bridger would cover for him. He was probably good at that sort of thing. Well, the Doctor knew that the UEO didn't know the whole story about the N'zyritians, and he highly doubted they knew all the details about the wreck of the _George_, either. So, it stood to reason that he'd be able to keep all the details of this from surfacing, too.

Oh, well. It was bound to be good preparation. All of that sort of thing was just the beginning. Or…well, no, maybe it wasn't, not _necessarily_. It _could_ just be the reverberation of this, what he was about to do—a collection of spores at key points in the timeline, attracting these events, which would in turn lay the foundation for their creation, which would make _this_ the beginning of everything that had happened and would yet happen in the future. A branching point, rooted in the present but reaching past and future alike.

_SeaQuest_'s crew might scatter after her first tour. He knew this particular ship herself would be destroyed—something that worked in his favour, as it would scatter whatever had adsorbed to the ship's surface and thus survive his quick clean-up process. Of course, whatever survived would be inert; wouldn't be activated until it was separated again. Fair bit of energy would be released then. Not that that would be very evident, given how Bridger had elected to save the world by destroying his beloved ship. But, still. Even if the crew scattered, even if the original ship was destroyed, there was going to be enough residual dust clinging to them that, at the very least for those who returned and allowed it to act collectively, it would be enough to influence things in their future, as he'd told Bridger.

Their future would be an interesting one.

Not necessarily straightforward, probably not entirely pleasant, and clearly not regulated, but…interesting, he'd bet. For all of them, wherever they ended up, whether they were on the next tour or not.

He wished, fleetingly, that he could be as confident in his own future.

Still. Other matters at hand. Well, one pressing matter in particular. But he was ready for it. He really was. Fragment, and TARDIS key. Lucas had tried to argue that one. A key probably wouldn't even score a rock, he'd said, let alone crack it. But the fragment wasn't _really_ a rock, and the TARDIS key was understandably exposed to much more temporal energy than a regular key, and said key was endowed with certain properties that other keys did not have—properties that were really too extensive for him to name, which was one thing he had had to be insistent on when Lucas kept asking, although he'd had to point out how it was possible to extrapolate a perception filter from it as an example to cease that line of questioning, although that had ultimately meant that he'd had to demonstrate and— Still. Point is, it would work. End of discussion.

And whatever happened after he cracked the fragment would happen.

Even if his best guess wasn't correct.

* * *

A/N: For anyone who's curious, 'adsorbed' is a word, not a typo. It means stuck to (well, 'accumulated on' is probably a better choice) the surface, as opposed to 'absorbed', where the substance in question would be taken inside the first substance, like when roots take up water. And, as always, many, many thanks to those who take the time to review.


	13. Chapter 13

Dr. Westphalen returned to her quarters just in time to see the Doctor strike the fragment. She wasn't entirely sure what happened after that. She was fairly certain that she'd blinked, and in the time that had taken, something had…changed. She wasn't sure what, exactly. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. But…there was some change there, noticeable enough to know that it was there, but not enough to pinpoint exactly what it was.

It was a moment before she realized everything in sight, herself included, was lightly coated in dust.

Frowning, she ran a finger down the sleeve of her uniform, and realized that, however fine the coating was, it was still gritty. It wasn't dust; it was sand.

She looked back at the Doctor, who was doubled over in the middle of her quarters, the fragment lying forgotten on the floor.

"Doctor?" Dr. Westphalen called gently, moving over to lightly touch his shoulder. "Are you…all right?"

He straightened up at her touch, but for all her medical training, she couldn't tell if he felt pain or stiffness in the way he moved, though it was slower than she expected, given his past energy. His face was white. His eyes had initially been closed, and once he opened them, it was a while before they managed to focus on her face, but when they did, he smiled. "Oh, good," he said softly. "It worked." And then he closed his eyes again.

"Doctor," Dr. Westphalen repeated, still rather alarmed, "are you all right?"

When he didn't answer, she repeated the question, and then, "Not just yet."

"But—"

"Sh. Not just yet."

Unsure of the situation, Dr. Westphalen bent to pick up the fragment at the Doctor's feet. It was free of the coating that touched everything else, and there was one hairline crack that ran around it in its entirety. She remembered, now, exactly when she'd gotten it, and how. She remembered what she'd thought, but now she wasn't sure why she'd thought that, because everything seemed to make perfect sense now. It was as if she'd just woken up from a dream that had felt all too real, and for a moment it was hard to separate reality from fiction. Except, in this case, every bit of it _was_ real, even if it no longer seemed like it.

Dr. Westphalen closed her own eyes for a moment. She wanted to keep an open mind, and for the most part, she did. But at times like this, she did prefer hard science to…this sort of thing. This was interesting, and this was fascinating, but it didn't follow logic, and so much of her world was rooted in logic that it was hard to let it go.

She didn't open her eyes until she heard the Doctor exhale in front of her. He had a small, sad smile on his face. "It'll all turn out," he said. "She'll be all right. You'll see. Resilient; that's the best word to describe you lot."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Now," the Doctor said. "Where were we?" He took the fragment from her, looked it over, and then looked up and around at the room. "Seems to have gone accordingly," he commented.

Dr. Westphalen noted his expression and frowned. "Why are you so unhappy?"

"Not unhappy," the Doctor corrected. "Just…." He trailed off, tugging at one ear. "This is…going to take a lot of cleaning up. This will be everywhere, this stuff." He waved an arm around him. "I need to gather it up and spread it around. It's not safe to keep it together." He frowned himself, adding one last complaint, saying, "I hate all these domestic sort of things."

Dr. Westphalen chuckled. "We can clean up, Doctor. It's just sand now. And we travel all over the ocean, so there's no reason that we can't spread it around for you."

The Doctor immediately brightened at this prospect. "Really?" he asked. "Oh, that'd just be _brilliant_. But…only if you're _really_, _really_ careful. You can't skip spots just because they're hard to get to. Every inch of this ship is going to need to be cleaned." He paused, staring off into space, and then amended, "Well…maybe not. If you just get the majority of the crystals, a small concentration for such a short period of time shouldn't matter. There's no way you'd get it all anyway. I'd even have trouble."

Dr. Westphalen smiled. "We'll do our best."

The Doctor grinned in response. "All I can ask for, isn't it?" His grin spread even wider. "Blimey, it's good to be able to _think_ again. I don't think I realized quite how much of a headache that was giving me. Not nearly so bad now. It's not magnified anymore. Well, and I gave the system a bit of a jolt, so things ought to be working just fine now, and that fragment's going to get signals telling it that this environment is saturated. It'll wind down, go into a dormancy cycle for a while, I expect. Just until I can take it somewhere else, somewhere open, and the signals there tell it to start up again." He beamed at her for a minute or so. "I love it when things work out."

"There are still other matters to attend to," Dr. Westphalen reminded him, practical as ever.

"Are there?" the Doctor asked, pocketing the fragment. "And what would they be? You said you'd take care of all the crystals for me."

"Have you thought about what you're going to tell the UEO?"

The Doctor visibly deflated. "Oh, not that again," he said, his tone on the verge of a whine. She raised her eyebrows, and he added, "I'm sure Captain Bridger will be able to cover for me."

"You were just planning on leaving?" she asked incredulously. "We're in the middle of the Atlantic! Under ten thous—"

"Surfacing procedures," the Doctor said, just before the bells started sounding. "To open the hatches, remember? That's another matter already sorted."

"But the UEO—"

"Will be very disappointed in the lack of report, I'm sure," the Doctor agreed, "but I think they'll be more concerned when all traces of me disappear. Well, most of them. I tend to miss some now and again, and you'd be surprised who turns those up. But generally I don't like to leave too many traces, not unless I have to, and especially not with military folk."

"You're just going to drop off the face of the Earth, are you?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"And what about everyone else on board this ship, everyone who wasn't privy to the entire truth? What do you propose we tell them about this dust?"

"Anything you like," the Doctor replied. "Either the truth, or a more believable lie. I've done both. Seems to work."

"What I'm trying to say," Dr. Westphalen said, "is that you can't just skip out on everything. You have to see it through until the end."

The Doctor looked at her for a moment. Then, "I'm sorry."

She raised an eyebrow again. "For?"

"For what I've done, what I'm doing, and what I'm going to do. Because I _am_ going to leave you in the lurch. I usually do. I don't stick around for this sort of thing. As far as I'm concerned, this _is_ the end. The problem's been solved, the solution found, and everything's sorted and taken care of and all the important loose ends are tied up. I can't bother with all those little things that you lot always worry about. It just…." He trailed off for a minute. "It reminds me too much," he finished, "of things that people tried to force on me when I spent time with UNIT. It's not their fault; they were used to it, and for some strange reason, expected that I would be, too. But paperwork really is horrible. I think I looked at one report and then never blinked an eye about those things again. Liz or Jo or something else was always there to do the things I didn't want to. And I was concerned with other things during that time, anyway. But the thing is, I was in an environment that, nice as it was, was choking me. I mean, that was sort of the point. I was exiled from my own planet for a spell, until they came to their senses. Well, at least until they wanted me to do their dirty work for them. But I just…. It all reminds me too much of that time, and when I think about that, I can't help but think of everything else, so I'd rather not think about it."

Dr. Westphalen studied his expression. "You always are thinking about it, aren't you?" she asked. "Whatever it is."

The Doctor nodded. "It's a constant reminder," he agreed. "I'll never forget it. I don't want to. I mean, there were times that I would have given anything _to_ forget it, but I had to, once, for…other reasons, and it didn't really work. It all kept coming through, pieces of it, and I'm the only one to remember it properly anyway, so I should. It's just not very pleasant. Some memories are. But some aren't, and they won't stay settled. Especially when things like this happen, because they remind me of what I should never forget. And—" He broke off, and shook his head. "Never mind."

"And?" Dr. Westphalen prompted.

The Doctor sighed. "And there was something, recently, that happened. It…. I tried to ignore everything. Memories, instincts, laws, the lot of it. And I did something I shouldn't have, something I never should have even attempted. I can't change any of that, but it made me realize how…how delicate things are. I know I go on about it all the time, but I was trying to forget it, to ignore it, because it was too painful, even though I knew I shouldn't and that I actually can't, but I tried, and—" He stopped again. "It didn't go very well."

"Everyone makes mistakes," Dr. Westphalen pointed out gently.

The Doctor glanced away, still ashamed. "But I knew better. I shouldn't have made that one."

"So you learned the limits," Dr. Westphalen informed him. "That's all. You tested them, and you found them, and now you'll stay within them. It won't happen again."

The Doctor, despite himself, chuckled. "Oh, you make it sound all so simple. I'll bet your brother was like that, and that your daughter is. Seems like the sort of thing that would be a family trait. Kristin, remember what's important, when all of this is over. And I don't just mean this time mess. I mean all of _this_, everything here. Friends tie you together, but family bonds are often tighter, and you need both. Now, and in the future. I know what it's like to drift, when those bonds are ripped away, and I know what it's like to do the tearing. I know you, along with everyone else, I expect, worry about Lucas, but that hasn't happened to him. His father hasn't cut him off entirely; just…cast him adrift for a while, pretending he needs to find his own footing. He's just…caught up in something, too busy, he thinks, to look after his own son. But he'll realize that he's not, you know, before it's all too late."

"So it'll all turn out all right?" Dr. Westphalen asked, recalling his earlier words, although she didn't realize until later that that wasn't precisely what the Doctor had said. "That's a comfort."

The Doctor nodded, then hesitated, and amended, "Well, mostly. Some things…are unavoidable. But those few small things aside, I think, yes, it will turn out all right. Even…even when it doesn't look like it will."

Dr. Westphalen smiled. "I'll be sure to tell that to Commander Keller, then. He was wondering whether you would give us any hints about our future, or if you knew it at all."

The Doctor opened his mouth as if to protest her words, or warn her about jumping to conclusions—it was that sort of expression his face adopted, one of hasty correction. But then he shook his head, and closed his mouth for a moment longer, and all he said in the end was, "Some things can be changed, and some things can't, and there are many paths to the same end, so even if I know what happens, I don't necessarily know all the little details that lead up to it, and those are most subject to change. But I know what he really wants to know, Dr. Westphalen, so you can tell Commander Scott Keller that I'm not sure what happens. I haven't looked into it, and I won't." Then he grinned, adding, "This is one of the rare occasions where I am forced to admit that I don't know everything. But do me a favour; if you ever happen to run into anyone who's met me, don't tell them that. I'd hate to spoil such a good impression."

Dr. Westphalen laughed, but agreed, and before she could say any more, the Doctor had skirted around her and was heading away. Perhaps he was going to speak with the captain, although she knew Nathan well enough to know that he already had a good measure of the Doctor and probably wouldn't be expecting it, since the results of whatever the Doctor had done spoke for themselves. Perhaps he was going to his ship, intending to sneak off before the UEO got a hold of him. Wherever it was, he clearly didn't intend to answer questions—certainly not Keller's, not if he was telling her what to say to him.

She'd spent her life surrounded by questions, searching for their answers. She knew that she could never possibly answer them all, but she drew inspiration from that, not discouragement. It wasn't that the questions were impossible to answer; it was that there were always more answers to be had.

She didn't really understand what had happened here, and she rather doubted that she ever would, but that wouldn't stop her from trying.

* * *

The Doctor made it without incident to the storage room where he had left the TARDIS and had the key in the lock before he heard, "Don't you keep your promises?"

Lucas.

The Doctor sighed and turned around to face the boy. "I do keep them," he answered truthfully, "whenever I can." He hadn't _promised_ to show Lucas around the TARDIS in so many words, but he had _agreed_ to let him look. And he hadn't intended to go back on that, but with so many things happening so quickly, it was time for him to step out. He knew that. He knew when it was time to leave, to go and to continue on alone. And that time had come.

"Krieg told me where you'd left your ship," Lucas said. "And I know every inch of _seaQuest_, so I could find her." He ran a finger along one of the boxes beside him and then asked, "What is this stuff, anyway?"

"It's a bit of a mixture," the Doctor answered. "But what happened is exactly what I told you would happen, and that's the result. Crystallized distortions, extraneous moments, unstable possibilities—the lot. It'll take a bit of cleaning up, but it's not dangerous in this form, not until it starts to conglomerate, which it will if you leave it long enough, and that is why you need to start getting rid of it as soon as possible. No more preservatives hanging about in the air now; moments will degrade again, slipping away into their proper place in the past, not jumbling to try to stay in the present to confuse you all." He paused for a moment, thinking, then added, "Remember that bit of N'zyritian residue I'd found when I'd first come aboard? That little bit of sand? That wasn't supposed to be there anymore, not after such a long period, but the spores in the air kept it fresh because it kept the memory of the entire incident alive, and there was a high enough concentration in the present that it had started leaking into the past, and that was the first major event that it could latch onto, so it did."

"So now that this dust is everywhere," Lucas asked, "does that mean all traces of our last alien encounter will have disappeared?"

"Yes. Well, soon. If all the silicon crystals haven't gone already, they're not going to stick around for very long."

"Like you."

For a teenager, the Doctor thought Lucas was surprisingly observant. But perhaps that was simply because he wasn't about to let the Doctor get away without having a few more of his unending questions answered. "Like me," the Doctor agreed, "but I've a little time yet. Come on." He turned back to unlock the TARDIS door and push it open, stepping to one side as he said, "Visitors first."

Lucas was astounded, the Doctor could tell. He immediately began asking questions and making observations, and the Doctor offered a few partial answers or corrections in response, but it wasn't just his intelligence that made his reaction different than Krieg's. Lucas knew what to expect. Not on a conscious level, the Doctor was sure—even if Krieg had told him everything. It was more…like he'd expected something like this, even if he wasn't precisely sure _what_ he was expecting, so that as surprised as he was by what he saw, he'd been _expecting_ to be surprised, and wasn't as surprised as he would have been otherwise.

Then again, everyone's reaction was different the first time they saw the TARDIS. He'd been travelling for years, and he hadn't heard _quite_ the same one twice—even if he usually did get one comment on his beloved ship's impossible interior. He liked that, though. He liked the curiosity, watching as realization hit—realization that the impossible could very well be possible under the right circumstances—and even the untiring tirade of questions.

Time ran differently in the TARDIS, but it did still pass. After a while, the Doctor put a hand on Lucas's shoulder and steered him away, heading for the main doors. When Lucas protested, the Doctor only said, "Trust me, there isn't time enough to give you to answer all your questions. And as much as I might like to continue, we haven't the time anymore. I need to go before they start searching for me, and you need to get back. You're part of this ship, Lucas Wolenczak. You're not officially crew yet, but you belong here, so you'd best go where you're needed."

"But they don't—"

"They do," the Doctor corrected. "You aren't just clever, Lucas. You're brilliant, just like everyone else. It's not long until _seaQuest_ is finished her first tour, is it? Parting is going to be hard, for everyone. You're a family now, but some are going to go their separate ways, so you'd best spend your time with them now, while you can."

Lucas stopped at this unwelcome reminder. "Who's not going to be coming back?" A sudden thought struck him. "Won't they let me? You just said I belong here!"

"You do belong here," the Doctor agreed, "and I don't doubt that you will come back. But even if others belong here, they have their own choices to make, and not everyone's going to stay."

"So Jonathan's going to accept command of another ship, then?" Lucas asked, running through his friends in his mind and trying to pick out likely possibilities. "But he turned the last one down, and—"

"It doesn't matter what happens," the Doctor interrupted, pushing Lucas forward again, "as long as everyone freely makes their own decisions. You'd be surprised where all those choices can lead, Lucas. Don't underestimate people. You humans are a brilliant lot. Even at your worst, you're brilliant, even if the results of that brilliance are horrifying and terrible and I have to stop it. But at your best, oh, at your best, you people shine far brighter than any of the stars you see up there in the sky."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

The Doctor laughed. "Just keep asking questions, Lucas. That's the only way to get answers." He pulled open the TARDIS doors and ushered Lucas outside. "Keep asking, and keep searching, and you're bound to come up with something brilliant."

Lucas looked at him for a moment. "I don't think you really answered most of my questions," he said quietly. "So are you going to come back later, so I can ask some more, if asking them is so important?"

"I don't know my own future," the Doctor said. It wasn't _entirely_ a lie. He _did _know what lay ahead for him, yes, and what signalled it, but he didn't know any of the details. "I just try to make sure nothing else tries to ruin everyone else's. Well, nothing alien, at any rate."

"Or temporal," Lucas asserted dully, as if realizing he probably wouldn't get any of the answers he wanted, even if he hadn't gotten halfway through the list he'd undoubtedly mentally composed beforehand.

The Doctor smiled. "Especially not temporal. But even if I understand time better than you, sometimes I need you lot to help me. Like you did, Lucas. You helped me. I don't think I ever did properly thank you for that. So, thank you." He grinned then. "You just helped save the world." Things would have spread, eventually. He wasn't sure how long it would have taken, but something as unstable as that would have had consequences beyond the fate of the _seaQuest_ and her crew. "And I'll bet it's not going to be the last time."

A smile tugged at the corners of Lucas's mouth. "Thanks," he said, appreciating the praise but still a bit embarrassed by it. "Some would say it's not the first time, either."

The Doctor grinned even more widely at that. "And I'd say they're right," he agreed enthusiastically.

Lucas let the smile come then. "Thanks, Doctor. For helping us." He stopped, but the Doctor, knowing from his expression that more was coming, waited. Then, "On your UNIT file—"

"Oh, have they been telling tales out of school?" the Doctor asked, but he was still grinning. "You've been reading stories about my past? What sort of things did you like? The plastic dummies? The dinosaurs? Not that they were really dinosaurs. Well, not the first time I ran into something called dinosaurs, though the second ones were, since someone decided to bring on their twisted version of Golden Age by trying to reverse time, but—oh, no, wait, you'd prefer the story with the giant robot, wouldn't you?"

Lucas blinked at him. "Um, no, actually."

"No?" the Doctor asked. "I did like that one. Not that K1 was _really_ all that big to begin with. I mean, big enough. But not really _giant_. Not until the Brigadier shot him with the disintegrator gun. Kettlewell's metal virus worked, though. Threw the growth mechanism into reverse, shrunk him right down until—" The Doctor stopped, then asked, perhaps a bit too brightly, "Which was it, then?"

"Uh, well, I was actually going to ask you what it meant when it said you could regenerate," Lucas admitted. "Can you…. I mean, if you lose a finger or something, can you grow it back? I know they were doing stem cell research and stuff, to see if they could grow back lost arms and legs or new organs and stuff, until there was a big uproar, so I sort of wondered, if you're an alien, did your people do that, too, or is it natural, like with starfish and things like that?"

The Doctor was quiet for a moment. Lucas had asked him one last question, and it had to be that one. It was a bit painful to hear that question—especially since he didn't even know if, this time, when death came, he _would_ be able to cheat it and regenerate.

One more explanation, then. Just a brief one. Just so…so someone else would know, if he did have to greet death when the knocking came, a bit more about the legends of the Time Lords. "It's not like that," the Doctor replied slowly. "Not really. Well, not usually. I did have my hand cut off and grew a new one, but that was under special circumstances. I was still within the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle, so things weren't set yet. Which means, really, that, less than fifteen hours earlier, I had…died. Or rather, should have died, but instead, I changed."

Lucas was staring at him now with something akin to disbelief. "You can't die?" he asked incredulously.

"No, I can," the Doctor corrected. "I just…have twelve chances to cheat death. Well, three more, if nothing goes wrong. Regeneration's not guaranteed. It's just…. Instead of dying, I can change every cell in my body. In other words, I get a new body. I didn't always look like this. Bit of an improvement, though, if I do say so myself. I've got hair now. Not ginger, but you can't have everything. Well…." He trailed off for a moment. "Technically, there _is _supposed to be a way to control your looks when you regenerate, but I never figured that out. Just the luck of the draw for me, I suppose."

Lucas mumbled something the Doctor couldn't quite catch, and then he said, "So that's why there's no picture or description of you in your UNIT file."

"Yeah, probably," the Doctor said. "But you're good with computers, Lucas. You hacked into UNIT, didn't you? I know I've left traces. You could try to find those if you like. That might answer some of your questions for you."

"So I have to search for all the answers, do I?" Lucas asked wryly, smirking a bit.

The Doctor smiled. "That'd be for the best, I think. But you'd best run along or you'll be missed. Give my best to Captain Bridger. He's…just brilliant. Really. I knew I'd like him when I finally met him, and I do."

Lucas nodded, clearly knowing that the second dismissal meant he shouldn't dally any longer. "Bye, then," he said.

Thinking of Sarah, especially after he'd recounted a bit of K1's tale, the Doctor answered, "Goodbye." And, sensing that perhaps Lucas might want to see one last thing before he left, the Doctor closed the TARDIS door, raced up to the console, and departed into the Vortex without even setting coordinates. He still needed to figure out the best spot to leave the fragment, after all.

He'd have to go to the Ood-Sphere soon, he knew. He could only put it off for so long. And he would go. Soon.

Just…not yet.

_Fin_

* * *

A/N: Well, the ending might seem a bit disjointed, but the story is finished. I think I'll include a little extra scene, though, just to make it seem more finished than it currently does. See? It pays to read author's notes sometimes. Anyway, I've had plenty of fun penning this story, and I'd like to thank Elvaro, kateydidnt, Ezzi, Susan M. M., mayoroscommon, Quartic Moose, Jerikagoddess, hecticlife, darkin520, and, of course, Questfan, for taking the time to share their thoughts with me. I always enjoyed hearing what they had to say. And, of course, if anyone has any suggestions for the future, I'd be happy to read them.


	14. Extra scene

Lucas groaned as he looked around his room. _Everything_ was coated in that sand stuff. "Well," Lucas amended, moving a pile of clothes off a chair, "everything on the surface, anyway." It was still bad enough. If any of this had gotten into his computer….

He cleaned it off first, being as meticulous with that as when he had been applying the hydrophilic finish on the Stinger—both of them. 'Missing a spot' hadn't been an option with that and it wasn't with this, either, if he understood correctly. They had to get as much of the sand as they possibly could.

Dr. Westphalen had told him what the Doctor had said when she'd handed him a pile of rags, and he knew how important it was to clean up, though he didn't really think it was fair that they had to clean up the Doctor's mess while he was off doing…something. Dropping off the fragment somewhere. But he didn't need to be told again that life wasn't fair, and he did have it pretty good aboard _seaQuest_. He could usually get whatever he wanted from Captain Bridger, at any rate.

The Doctor had told Dr. Westphalen that they needed to clean every inch of _seaQuest_ that they could, even the bits that were difficult to get to. Then, apparently, he'd changed his mind. That didn't sit very well with Lucas. What the heck could the Doctor have meant when he'd told Dr. Westphalen something about having a small concentration of the sand for such a short period of time? _SeaQuest_ may be finished her first tour soon, but they weren't going to retire her. She'd be used again.

There was no reason they _wouldn't_ use her again. Not that he could think of, anyway. She'd cost enough to build, in terms of both time and resources, and she'd proven her worth time and again. So if there was any sand that they couldn't get, it would stick around. It was highly unlikely everything would get cleaned up, even once she did get back to port. Whatever concentration of sand was left on board when they were done would probably stay there.

Some things weren't worth wondering about. Lucas wasn't convinced the Doctor had answered half his questions fully—heck, he wasn't even sure if he'd gotten honest answers, though he couldn't think of any reason the Doctor would lie to him. He probably hadn't. Well, not about anything important. He was a lot more likely to purposely leave stuff out of his response than to lie about it. At least, that's the sort of person he'd seemed to be.

Lucas knew he wasn't the only one with questions, either. The captain may have gotten the most answers out of all of them. He'd probably asked the right questions. It couldn't _just_ be a matter of respect—the Doctor had seemed to respect Dr. Westphalen, too. But she would've asked different things than Captain Bridger, just the same as Commander Keller's questions were different from Krieg's. And everyone on the bridge—had they even _had_ a decent chance to ask any of their questions? The Doctor'd gone off with Dr. Westphalen, leaving the rest of them at the meeting, and then…. By the time he'd returned, things had been moving too quickly to ask questions that weren't directly related to the situation. Even Lucas had recognized that, though that's not to say that he hadn't tried otherwise. He'd even gotten a few partial answers out of the Doctor then, too, when they'd been working on the fragment together.

Satisfied his computer was clean, Lucas threw the rag aside and got onto the Internex. He could finish cleaning later. Right now, he wanted answers. The Doctor may have managed to corrupt his UNIT file, but he'd said he'd left traces. All Lucas had to do was look for them, and then perhaps he'd get some more answers.

It was perhaps half an hour later, while waiting for an atrociously slow page to load—it had been, what, five, ten seconds already?—that Lucas was glancing around his room, trying to figure out how long it would take him to finish cleaning. He thought the prospect dismal, especially since he couldn't call in any favours from Krieg to help him because the supply officer undoubtedly had any of his free time filled with cleaning, too. He looked back at the computer, which was now finally proclaiming that the page couldn't be found and suggesting that he double-check things. No amount of tinkering changed that, so he decided to try following a more solid lead, heading back to the UNIT site and hacking his way in. Just because he couldn't access the Doctor's file, didn't mean he wasn't mentioned anywhere else.

Not ten minutes later, he'd found the file documenting the story the Doctor had been telling him about—the one with the giant robot. It gave him a couple of names to look up. Even if he couldn't track the people down and get their contact information, he could at least figure out connections between them and others and the connection that they all had to the Doctor. He might not get answers, exactly, but he should be able to get a clearer view of the overall picture—providing there was one to be had in the first place.

Traces. This probably wasn't what the Doctor had meant, but it would certainly help. Even if he couldn't get answers directly, it would give him a means to them, and that was a start.

Lucas looked around his room again. He really should get back to work. Bridger wouldn't be happy if he hadn't managed any more than just his computer, and he didn't want to disappoint the captain. The excuse of being a teenager only went so far.

Lucas sighed and grabbed one of the shirts from the pile he'd moved off the chair, intending to use it to pick up more of the sand that coated the window which revealed the aquatube. Something in a plastic case, which undoubtedly had been caught up in his pile of laundry, clattered to the deck.

It was one of those old DVDs. He could tell by the case. Nothing was that big anymore.

Lucas picked it up and opened it. Inside, he found a note. On it was written one word: traces. Lucas grinned, and turned his attention to the DVD. It looked to be in good condition—wasn't even scratched. He could probably figure out a way to play it—the trouble with having the latest technology is that you sometimes had to sacrifice the older stuff—but even if he couldn't, Krieg would probably be able to requisition an old player for him. Whatever it was the Doctor wanted him to find, he'd find a way to see it. And from there…. Well, from there he'd figure out what it meant and see where it led him.

Lucas was fairly sure that the trace the Doctor had left wasn't in the actual movie, though he'd watch it anyway just to be sure. But he'd had some DVDs as a kid, and he knew half the fun was finding all the hidden features on them. If the Doctor had left a trace on a DVD and knew it was there, he'd probably put it there. Lucas didn't know why he'd deliberately leave something behind like that if he kept insisting he hated having so much around, though he might be able to hazard a guess once he found it, or at least once he found some more information on it—for doubtless there would be information on the Internex—but finding that out was just another piece to the puzzle.

It didn't matter that he didn't know what the final picture was or if he would ever be able to get enough pieces to really see it. That wasn't the important part. _Looking_ was the important part—that's where all the learning was, and all the problems and puzzling and thinking and understanding that led to that learning. There was a lot more to be gained in the looking than in the finding, and not just because you didn't find anything unless you looked. It was because you usually came across something you never would have found otherwise in the search for whatever you were really looking for. Even he knew that.

Still. Knowing that wasn't going to get him out of this cleaning, but at least he'd have something to look forward to once he finished, even if it was just the elusive promise of an answer. The promise of a plausible possibility, a likely explanation, a potential solution, or even an impossible but all too true answer—the promise of it was enough to drive the search.

He supposed he was a bit like his father when it came to that.

But he didn't need to think about that now. His father wasn't here, and it wasn't like he could ever tell him about this anyway. And, as much as Lucas wanted to avoid it, he couldn't deny that there was work to be done. A lot of it. When he got done here, the captain would probably get him to crawl through somewhere else to clean up another spot. And he'd do it, too, even if he didn't really want to. Because Bridger would ask, and that was important. And because he was part of this ship and her crew and had to do his part. Because he belonged, and this was part of belonging.

This was his family, almost more so than his _real_ family. This was a family that had stuck together through the good and the bad, who'd shared sufferings of sweltering heat and freezing cold, who'd acted in spite of fear and who'd discovered unimaginable things. Maybe they would be scattered after their first tour, but that didn't matter. Sometimes families did drift apart or change, welcoming new members into their fold. That was normal. It didn't mean their family would be destroyed, that the ties that bound them together would be severed beyond repair. They were family, and they were friends. That's all that really mattered.

* * *

A/N: Well, the Doctor didn't really have any use for that authorized control disk from _Blink_, now did he, especially since its one trip had already been redeemed? Besides, I felt it best to tie up things on the _seaQuest_ end a bit more and get a tiny glimpse at the mess the Doctor's left behind.


End file.
